The Doors: Re-contextualizing how we evaluate risks.

There was something I was reading a while ago that was related to existential flex’s in business, and how to think about navigating the risks involved. And the analogy used was that of two doors, where if one allowed you to walk back and forth through it, the other was designed with a doorknob on only one side. In other words, the first door would be a proxy for making an unlimited number of mistakes while the second would only allow you one shot. But this now begs the question of how to adequately tell the difference between the two when faced with important decisions to make.

So much of what’s required in achieving anything requires the ability to separate fact from conjecture. And the longer it takes for a person to clearly delineate the two from each other, the more fear has a chance to gain momentum by allowing our brains the time needed to create a compelling story that can justify why we’re dragging our feet. And if you’ve ever heard Mel Robbins’ talk about her “five second rule,” you’ll understand that there’s an evolutionary reason for why fear is amplified the longer you pause, which you can view here.

Story time…

Given that the name Marine has a connotation of water, means that you can’t become one unless you know how to swim. So when my platoon in basic training got to the swim qualification portion, the first test we had to pass was jumping off of a high dive into the deepest end of our swimming pool (probably about 14 feet deep), and with a bunch of our gear on (helmet, rubber M16, large backpack, and boots). And I remember thinking that there was no way I’d be able to swim back to the top with all that on. But what got me over the fear was being able to quickly realize that the worst-case scenario was probably the least likely case scenario, as the pool had plenty of instructors in it. And even if I did pass out from taking on too much water, they’d simply revive me on the side of the pool. So the question then became, “am I willing to pay this price of discomfort to become a Marine?” And once I told myself yes, I was able to move forward. So this was clearly a door #1 scenario.

Another example was when I was about to leave the Marines at age 22, and I had the choice to either try my luck with the unknowns of the NYC area or simply return home to the familiar surrounding of Portland, OR. And while the second option would have been 100 times more convenient, I knew that I’d always kick myself for not trying my luck out East. So again, because I was willing to pay the price of discomfort for an opportunity that I felt had way more upside than going back home, this too became a door #1 scenario. Was it nerve wracking? Yes! Was it worth it? Hell yeah!! And if I had to do it all over again, I absolutely would.

The funny thing is that as I’ve gotten older, I have found myself at times plagued with confusion as to whether or not certain opportunities were actually a door #1 or #2. But what continues to help re-center my perspective is when I remember that the only things in this world that actually constitute a #2 is the loss of life and limb. So in reality, any hesitation outside of that is really a response to the feeling that one might not have the physical stamina to go the distance to fight for what they say they want. That said, I’m sympathetic to why people can’t tell the difference between these two doors. Meaning, if we’re already fighting daily battles within our respective arenas, the thought of not having enough energy for those things—let alone the extra needed to stretch towards something more—can lead us to falsely project that something might be a #2 when it really isn’t.

Suggested Takeaway’s…

a) Outside of the loss of life or limb, everything is actually a door #1 scenario. But if it feels like a #2, then it’s only because you don’t have enough minds around you who are capable of seeing variables and strategies that you can’t currently see.

b) Everything we do requires energy. Therefore, the greater your physical capacity for discomfort, the greater your mental capacity will be for tolerating discomfort, as the mind will always tap out before the body does. So this is why physical exercise is such an incredible value add in our lives, and in more ways than any of us will ever fully comprehend.  

c) A lot of our risk assessments are predicated upon our conception of reasonability, which is nothing more than an issue of comparison. Case in point, the 4-minute mile.  

Growth & Goals

Given how common it is to hear people bemoan where they are in life or their careers, you’d think that conversations about growth and goals would be more commonplace. So my hope is that by the end of this post you’ll either develop a new interest in this subject matter, or at least leave with yet another way to think about it.

In the macro sense, the goals we choose to embrace represent visible and evolutionary mile-markers within our lives. And at the micro level, they represent experiments that we conduct to test the theories we have on anything that’s important to us. So since one of my greatest goals has always been to sound as great as my musical heroes, it means that I’m going to have to learn how to think like them—which is a growth issue—in order to play like them, which is a goal issue. And like I like to say these days, “the quality of our doing will always be a lagging measure of the quality of our being.”

Recently I came up with a simple iceberg concept that’s great for explaining why great musicians sound the way they do. And the gist of the concept is that if the visible part of their playing represents feelings, and the part just below the water’s surface represents moments, then the bottom of the iceberg represents function. In other words, if the potency of a listener’s feelings is reflective of the number and quality of memorable moments, then the solidity of a bands musical foundation is what makes it possible to create those moments. Now by this logic, it clearly says that the more moments you make, the more potent the feelings should be for the listener. However, there’s an important caveat to this perspective that can invalidate this theory if it’s not pointed out. Which I honestly believe separates the good from the great.

Story time…

A few years ago, bassist Chuck Israels said something to me that I’ll never forget. He said that back in his day everyone learned to play the same songs a million different ways, whereas today people learn to play a million songs the exact same way. And he’s absolutely correct! But the reason why is because in his youth he had more opportunities to learn how to maintain the attention of a typical non-music playing and paying audience, which tends to be the bulk of the attendees at most music events. And like the military, we musicians should be training for the types of battlefields we’re inevitably going to have to encounter. But when musicians aren’t put in enough of these environments to learn how to play for an everchanging audience—unlike the same faces they encounter among their peers in perhaps a scholastic environment— many important lessons go unlearned.

As mentioned earlier, moments create feelings. But if embraced at face value, this statement can derail even the most well-intentioned of musicians. Meaning that like the reciting of a script, it’s not hard to play an idea without regard to how it affects anyone else. But when it comes to the rhythmic timing/placement of an idea, it can only be understood within the context of how it affects the feeling of a groove for everyone else. So as you can see one is me focused whereas the other is we focused. And when I learned to place a higher premium on the integrity of a groove for the benefit of others, it suddenly became the musical differentiator that I was missing for how to make a song sound unique, and not like a million other songs that I know how to play. But to sustain this type of focus required me to become the kind of person that could see the value in caring more about what I could do for others than what I could do for the sole benefit of myself. And that perspective is one of the most quintessential hallmarks of personal growth, as in this scenario the quality of my being needed to be what it needed to become in order to improve the quality of my performances.  

So again, while goals are great for helping us to focus our energy on a productive set of purposes—so as to prevent ourselves from spinning aimlessly in life without direction—remember that the true value of our goals is that they reflect back to us the extent to which we’ve matured in life. And the extent to which we mature is the extent to which we travel inward to learn more about how to improve our outlook on life, so as to ultimately improve the way we show up in the world.

Suggested Takeaways…

a) Goals are temporary, growth is forever.

b) Good musicians rely on formulaic moments to drive the end feeling, whereas great musicians rely on the contextual feeling of a song to dictate the substance of the moments that can drive the end feeling.    

c) The goals we choose to embrace represent visible and evolutionary mile-markers within our lives. And like a mirror, they reflect back to us where we are along the continuous spectrum of our internal growth. 

Pathways: How to find a sustainable narrative in life to follow.

If we look at life through a utilitarian lens, it’s safe to conclude that our collective purpose is to simply maintain the existence of our species. Which means that at the individual level we simply have to leverage our creative capacities to this end. Therefore, in my opinion, this train of thought is what all 18-22+ year old’s should embrace as the begin to draw out the blueprints for their future and how to best “show up” in that future.

As you can imagine, we humans think in terms of narratives. Meaning that our internal story-telling is always guiding us like a set of conveyor belts towards a destination of some sort (i.e. destiny). Therefore, we should want to stay critical of the stories we tell ourselves so that any calcified beliefs we hold aren’t inadvertently inhibiting our ability to take advantage of certain opportunities—especially if they turn out to be better suited for getting us to where we’re trying to go in life than our original plans.

In getting back to this 18-22+ year old demographic, the narrative that many of them are forced to entertain starts with a question that sounds like “what do you want to do for the rest of your life?” Which I think is too often heard as a call-to-action for finding a job that’s tolerable enough to preoccupy ones time with until they can ride off into the sunset of their retirement years. Now while this question at face value may sound innocuous, I believe that if the vision one gets from it doesn’t include a cause that’s bigger than themselves, then the ramifications of such a narrative can lead to the types of existential crises where if or when the honeymoon phase of a given job wears off, and a realization sets in that the commitment made towards said job was really to a bio-chemical feeling, then it’s easy to feel like a ship lost at sea without a compass when that feeling goes away. It’s like with music…yes it’s fun to play, but that aspect alone is not why I still play it. It’s the vision for how I want to use my musical acumen and social influence from it to help others, that compels me to stay up to 3-4am on most nights without complaint to practice, write music, self-educate on a variety of topics, and to devise strategies that I think have a possibility for affecting change in all of the ways that I imagine being able to do so at the local, state, regional, and potentially national level. So again, to accept this notion that our basic function as humans is to be of service to all the practical and meta ways that we define survival, is where we begin to expand the base of our energetic fuel tank, so as to hedge against physical and mental burnout (which I think is most people’s chief concern for the work they do). And lastly, once a person can identify at least one aspect of this survival issue that they’d like to assume responsibility for affecting, then they can get on with the process of identifying all of the fun and creative ways that they might like to design an enjoyable and interesting work experience that should rarely feel like they’d ever need a vacation from.

Suggested Takeaways…

a) Ladders of success are only as relevant as the walls they lean against. So identify a target (i.e. wall), a projected time frame to hit said target, and reverse engineer with any set of “vehicles” (i.e. jobs, tasks, businesses, investments, etc.) to get you where you’re trying to go.

b) While the narratives we entertain are always given to us by others, books, or the media, we still have autonomy over the level of scrutiny we choose to place those thoughts under. 

c) The physical purpose of life is to sustain itself. Therefore, if you can’t figure out how to find your purpose, it means you haven’t identified a problem yet that you feel compelled to solve for the benefit of anyone greater than yourself.

Improvisation: Redefining the process.

When you take the word Improvisation and split it down the middle, you get the word Improve minus the letter E. And what’s in need of improving is the melody, as it’s always played before you’re free to “improve” upon it. Now logic says that if you want to learn to do something, simply find a good model to emulate. However, it should also go without saying that your comprehension of what you hear is of greater importance than simply the sound itself. Therefore, what you listen for matters more than what you listen to. So before getting to the crux of this post, I want to point out that the best improvisers always embody the three elements, which as you’ll see, will play an important role in how this post concludes.

a) They have a myopic concern for self-expression.

b) They have a concern for their fellow musicians’ ability to adequately support them within the functional areas of time, intonation, and harmony.

c) They have a concern for their band’s collective effort in servicing the emotional integrity of the music they’re playing.

As mentioned, what we listen for is more important than what we listen to. And when I listen to many of the ideas that people reference, it sounds like they simply focused on the sound of those ideas at the expense of questioning why those ideas were ever played in the first place. And because texture and function are the only two reasons why we play anything, the unfortunate trend these days (especially within the education system) has been that people have become more bullish in their investment towards self-serving ideas (i.e. texture) as opposed to unifying ones (i.e. function). And just to be clear, this has less to do with character defects as it has to do with flaws in how they were taught to think about improvisation. But here’s the irony. When we listen to the agreed upon masters, especially in their later years, they all tend to express themselves in a way where they can satisfy both the issue of texture and function at the same time. Therefore, this leads me to believe that if you can focus on being functional in a way that also allows you to express yourself with the textures you like, you’ll finally become free to shrink your circle of concern down to just one thread of thought. Which, when accomplished, can greatly decrease the amount of incessant mind chatter that keeps many musicians confused about what to play, and how to play it. So here’s my remedy for this.

If practicing is a form of situational preparedness, and the ideas you hear on a record are simply tactics for negotiating those particular situations, then the goal is to simply decide if you want to adopt those same tactics for similar situations. And once you’ve listened to, and have learned to emulate a number of these tactics, it’ll reduce the chances that you’ll be caught off guard as to what to play in any given situation. Therefore, once a melody has been played and the real improvisation starts, it’ll increase the chances that your ideas will be framed through the lens of wanting to help everyone else’s performance, despite you being the soloist (think Miles Davis)! So once you can develop the faith that a focus on others can still yield extreme satisfaction for yourself, it’ll not only revolutionize your growth potential as a musician, but as a citizen of society as well.

Suggested Takeaway’s…

a) While the quality of what we listen to matters, what we focus on when we’re listening matters more.

b) There are two types of ideas: self-serving and functional. Self-serving are textures that satisfy only the soloist, while more functional ideas are specifically meant to help others. Therefore, to satisfy yourself through the aid of others means you “win.”

c) Oftentimes we listen to the improvisations of our heroes as if their ideas sprang up from out of nowhere. But we always forget to ask the critical question of how this concept of improvising even started in the first place. And the answer is that in the beginning, success meant being able to play a well worked-out arrangement, which had much less to do with how we think about soloing today. Therefore, through the knowledge of the many tactical ways in which the masters thought to negotiate an arrangement, is where you’ll find the raw materials needed for you to play through all other arrangements, as well as when it’s time for you to improvise.  

Music & Sleep: What wind instruments can teach us about our sleep habits.

While sleep is crucial for the rejuvenation of our health each day, it’s obviously the quality of our rest that matters more than the length. So while the impractical notion of condensing 8 hours of sleep into 1 would be attractive for overachievers, there’s still a decent amount of wiggle room for us all to move the needle ever so slightly towards this end.

Depending upon who you are, you may not know that the sole purpose of a tuning slide on a brass instrument, or mouth piece on a wood wind instrument, is to simply get you within a range where you can comfortably blow your horn without having to overcompensate with your embouchure to keep a note in tune. However, the stronger your embouchure and air support is (think force of air against a door frame), the easier it’ll be to keep a note in tune, regardless of the number of mechanical defects a horn has. Case in point, when a friend of mine let me borrow his soprano sax years ago, I didn’t realize until I sat in on someone’s gig that the ENTIRE upper register of his horn was a ½ step flat! Luckily I figured it out quickly, and was able to adjust on the fly. But had I not had the strength of my embouchure to keep notes half way in tune, it would have turned out much worse.

Now as an advanced society, it’s clear that we’re always seeking ways to maximize our effectiveness without sacrificing sustainability. So just like a musician who has to toy around with figuring out where the sweet spot is between maximum sound and control of said sound, I also believe that we have to toy around with finding where the sweet spot is between the least number of hours we can afford to sleep without sacrificing our alertness throughout the day. Therefore, if the position of our tuning slides and mouth pieces are like the duration of our sleep, then our embouchure and air support would be analogous to the blood flow needed to function properly throughout the day. And having tested this theory on myself over the past 20 years, I have found that the results are still consistent, in that when I personally get 5 to 6 hours of sleep, coupled with my morning routine of:

1) Drink one bottle of water

2) Full body stretch (30 minutes)

3) 100 sit ups, 100 oblique crunches (both sides), 100 flutter kicks, 100 standing twists, 50 side leg raises (for lower back support), and 50 push ups.

I can still stay awake for the rest of the day, even if on a rare occasion it involves me getting as little as one hour of sleep over a 24+ hour stretch. That said, filling my nutritional gaps with supplements for the past 18 years has been critical to my ability to maintain this kind of pace. So again, while the amount of sleep you get just gets you within firing range for being functional on a given day, it’s ultimately a mixture of diet and exercise (blood flow) that will carry you through your day with the alertness you want.   

Suggested Takeaways…

a) It’s not the amount of sleep you get, it’s the quality of sleep you get. So after you’ve ruled out that your nutrition, exercise, and bed are on point, it’ll become much easier to draw a bullseye around the number of hours you can realistically afford to get by on for your body to repair itself.

b) The number of hours you sleep are to your mouth piece or tuning slide position, what adequate blood flow and nutrition is to your embouchure and air support.

c) To dial in your exercise, nutrition, sleep, and bed situation is truly a forward failing proposition. But the number of insights you’ll learn along the way about yourself and why your tendencies are what they are, will yield dividends for years to come.

Music and fitness: What distance running can teach us about success.

To be successful at anything you need to have rhythms and routines in place so you can capitalize upon the compounding effect of consistency. And if you’ve never read “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy, I’d highly recommend that you do so, as he does a great job of unpacking how we can all benefit from this natural phenomenon. That said, one of the routines that I’ve instituted in my life is to run every Tues, Thurs, and Saturday. Now historically speaking, I’ve never liked distance running because of the boredom factor. I’ve always been a quick burst of energy kind of guy, which is why I like tennis, basketball, football, martial arts, and weightlifting. However, it was a subtle shift in my mindset about distance running that gave me the additional insight I now have about music and success that I’d like to share with you.

Running is as much a mental exercise as it is physical. And being a retired military vet, I know how your mind can break much sooner than your body will. So a strategy I’ve come up with is that if I calibrate my physical output on a scale of 1-10, then I never run faster than 5. Why? It’s because the closer I get to 10, the more my body kicks into survival mode, which causes it to look for a way out (i.e. to stop or slow down). Not to mention, it opens a possibility of injury which will certainly sideline my progress. So if my mind is the gateway to the quality of my performance, then I have to find a way to regulate my emotions. Therefore, by running consistently throughout the week (coupled with an effective diet), then the sensation of 5 the following week would be equivalent to perhaps 5.5 or 6 from the prior week. So as you can see, the goal is to increase the capacity of my output without realizing it or overextending myself physically and mentally.

If you were to ask me how it feels to play music on a high level, I’d say it feels like flying with little to no extraneous energy to do so. And if you ask a runner what it feels like when they’re experiencing “runner’s high,” they’ll probably tell you the same thing. But it only feels that way once you find a groove. Thus, when you run for the sensation of 5, this allows you to maintain the most sustainable max-speed to energy conservation ratio while thinking clearly. But here's where the rubber meets the road (pun intended). Unless you’re a professional athlete who gets paid to run competitively, you don’t need an arbitrary benchmark like time, as the goal of running is for longevity of health, not a non-existent ribbon. But if you can take your ego out of your exercising by not judging the time it takes you to run your route, then your awareness of time can be thought of as a useful peripheral indicator of your progress. But again, time has to be an after-thought, not the main attraction. So when I practice my instruments, my goal is to do so with the least amount of energy possible while still maximizing my speed and agility. So when I’m consistent with my practicing, and am relaxed enough to tell when I’m compromising the integrity of my technique, I’m able to self-correct on the fly. Which I can’t do if my thinking isn’t clear (which tension in the body will always cloud).

Lastly, the linchpin that connects everything I’ve mentioned is breath, as a lack of it always creates tension in the body, which in turn affects the clarity of the mind. So for me, the true value of running is that it strengthens the capacity of my breath control. Which is why I believe that if you reflect on the weight of every major decision you’ve ever made, good or bad, it’s arguable that the quality of your breathing was always a supporting cast member throughout those decisions.