While adding new shelf paper in our new rental house there was a knock at the door. When I opened the door I was greeted by a congenial and intelligent man who expressed his need for help. He had just moved in with his family down the street and he did not yet have a job. In Alabama, where he used to live, he worked for a landscaping company. Without contacts, he explained, he was having a difficult time getting hired onto a crew near his new home. He asked if he could do any work for me in my yard to raise money for his family. As we walked around the back of my new house, he started to call off the names of the different plants he passed and talked about what I might do if I were to make a change to the landscaping. Back home he had graduated from technical school with a specialty in horticulture. “When I first got there,” he explained “I didn’t even know where carrots came from. I thought they grew from a tree! Now I know the Latin names for all of these,” he said, pointing around the yard. If you have ever heard me talk about my philosophy for intentional encounters, you know that I always attempt to Lower the Ladder and Only Lift Up. This is how I live life and is now the working title for a book I am writing. Lowering the ladder means to help someone out of a hole they are in by adding a tool or knowledge that allows them to get out of that hole under their own power. I believe this is an important part of helping people not become enabled into defeatist behaviors and allows them to feel a sense of accomplishment even though they did receive help getting there. Only Lifting Up means that in every encounter where a need is discovered you are helping that person reach a new level in their life in a way that does not put you in a bad place yourself. If you cannot help the person, then the alternative is to avoid pushing them down by instilling in the conversation a sense of hope and retained dignity. Most people’s first impulse would be to give him a few dollars and send him on his way. I do not see this as really helpful and could inadvertently push him down. As we walked around the yard, I asked him questions about his sudden move from Alabama to Georgia. I asked more about his mother who was ill and his daughter’s epilepsy. I listened closely to see if I could identify what would act as the ladder in his particular situation. Then I heard it. If he were able to get his hands on a lawn mower, he could get started mowing lawns and could work his way out of his hole under his own power. Now a lawn mower is not an overly expensive item, but it is still more than I can afford, having just gotten into this new house and put down deposits and paid for household items. So I started to look around on Facebook marketplace for an affordable used lawnmower. I am also going to put up information on facebook about this story and see who would be willing to donate a few dollars to help him get a lawnmower. My goal in the whole situation is to see him get to a new level in his life and be able to make a real difference in helping his family. If the lawnmower is the answer then it is time to get the man a lawnmower.  Photo by Simone Acquaroli on Unsplash

Let’s do an experiment you and I. I’m going to share with you some people that I personally admire and then encourage you to watch a video and read a bit about them. You will receive their name, their qualities, a video about them, and the introduction to their Wikipedia article. Then I will encourage you to think about these people and ask yourself “What qualities do I need in order to admire someone? Who are those that I admire most?” Sound good? Ok, let’s begin. But first, what are some of the qualities I admire in other people? Courage – both the ability to do something that frightens one as well as having strength in the face of pain or grief. Humanity – humaneness, and benevolence. Clarity – transparency, certainty, purity, and intelligence Kindness – the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Humor -the quality of being amusing or comic, especially as expressed in literature or speech. Daryl Davis For his COURAGE, HUMANITY, CLARITY, AND KINDNESS I first heard about Daryl with his connection to befriending and affecting the hearts of white supremacists. Then I learned he played with Chuck Berry and is an amazing musician.  https://youtu.be/pESEJNy_gYQ From Wikipedia: Daryl Davis is an American R&B and blues musician, author, actor and bandleader.[1] Known for his energetic style of Boogie-woogie piano,[1] Davis has played with such musicians as Chuck Berry,[1][2] Jerry Lee Lewis, B. B. King,[2] Bruce Hornsby, and Bill Clinton.[3][4] His efforts to improve race relations, in which as an African-American he engaged with members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), have been reported on by media such as CNN and The Washington Post.[5][6][7]Davis summed up his advice as: “Establish dialogue. When two enemies are talking, they’re not fighting.”[8] Davis is a Christian and he has used his religious beliefs to convince Klansmen to leave and denounce the KKK Lin-Manuel Miranda For his HUMANITY, CLARITY, KINDNESS, AND HUMOR Lin-Manuel captured my heart first with his Broadway musical “Hamilton” and then by watching numerous interviews and documentaries about him. It also doesn’t hurt that Emma Watson is in this video as she would fit into my “admire” top twenty list if there were such a thing.  From Wikipedia: Lin-Manuel Miranda (/lɪn mænˈwɛl məˈrændə/; born January 16, 1980) is an American composer, lyricist, playwright, and actor best known for creating and starring in the Broadway musicals Hamilton and In the Heights. He co-wrote the songs for Disney‘s Moana soundtrack (2016) and is set to star in their upcoming film Mary Poppins Returns. Miranda’s awards include a Pulitzer Prize, two Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and three Tony Awards. Ellen DeGeneres For her COURAGE, CLARITY, KINDNESS, HUMANITY, AND HUMOR You don’t need me to say anything about Ellen. You know her already. Give the video a watch.  From Wikipedia: Ellen Lee DeGeneres (/dɪˈdʒɛnərɪs/; born January 26, 1958)[2] is an American comedian, television host, actress, writer, and producer.[3] DeGeneres starred in the popular sitcom Ellen from 1994 to 1998 and has hosted her syndicated TV talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, since 2003. Her stand-up career started in the early 1980s, and included a 1986 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. As a film actress, DeGeneres starred in Mr. Wrong (1996), appeared in EDtv (1999), and The Love Letter (1999), and provided the voice of Dory in the Pixar animated films Finding Nemo (2003) and Finding Dory (2016); for Nemo, she was awarded the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first time an actress won a Saturn Award for a voice performance. In 2010, she was a judge on American Idol for its ninth season. Brian Cox For his CLARITY, HUMANITY, AND HUMOR If you watch this quick video you may find yourself spending hours having science explained to you in a way that makes perfect sense.  From Wikipedia: Brian Edward Cox OBE FRS (born 3 March 1968) is an English physicist who serves as professor of particle physics at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester.[8][9] He is best known to the public as the presenter of science programmes, especially the Wonders of… series[10][11][12] and for popular science books, such as Why Does E=mc²? and The Quantum Universe. He has been the author or co-author of over 950 scientific publications.[13] Cox has been described as the natural successor for BBC‘s scientific programming by both David Attenborough and Patrick Moore.[14][15] Before his academic career, Cox was a keyboard player for the bands D:Ream and Dare. He earns £250,000 – £299,999 as a BBC presenter[16] Andy Stanley For his CLARITY, KINDNESS, COURAGE, HUMANITY, AND HUMOR I attended one of Andy Stanley’s churches for a while and have watched and listened to many hours of his programming. Give this video a go. From Wikipedia: Charles Andrew “Andy” Stanley (born May 16, 1958) is the senior pastor of North Point Community Church, Buckhead Church, Browns Bridge Church, Gwinnett Church, Woodstock City Church, and Decatur City Church. He also founded North Point Ministries, which is a worldwide Christian organization. Tawakkol Karman For her COURAGE, HUMANITY, CLARITY, AND KINDNESS I discovered Tawakkol Karaman while researching for this blog entry. She is amazing.  From Wikipedia: Tawakkol Karman is a Yemeni journalist, politician, and human rights activist. She leads the group “Women Journalists Without Chains,” which she co-founded in 2005.[3] She became the international public face of the 2011 Yemeni uprising that is part of the Arab Spring uprisings. She has been called the “Iron Woman” and “Mother of the Revolution” by Yemenis. Karman, along with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee, were the co-recipients of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”[63] Of Karman, the Nobel Committee said: “In the most trying circumstances, both before and during the ‘Arab spring’, Tawakkul Karman has played a leading part in the struggle for women’s rights and for democracy and peace in Yemen.”[63][64] The Nobel Committee cited the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, which states that women and children suffer great harm from war and political instability and that women must have a larger influence and role in peacemaking activities; it also “[c]alls on all actors involved, when negotiating and implementing peace agreements, to adopt a gender perspective.”  Photo by Nina Strehl on Unsplash

Over the past 20 years, I have worked my way in and out of believing in my dreams. Sacrificing and working hard for what I want is something that was instilled in me by my parents, but sometimes, even with hard work, our goals can stay just out of reach. Below are five things in life that  I wanted, thought had become unattainable, and then achieved: Find someone who gets me and whom I can support I’m sure everyone has had that experience of “the one who got away.” By the time I moved to Atlanta in 2001, I was fairly certain that the right person for me was someone I had already dated and was already out of my life. What I was looking for was someone who could deal with my peculiar personality, my eccentricities, as well as my anxiety. As I started to date in Atlanta, the belief that the one for me had escaped grew stronger and stronger. Even though I was still asking for dates, I couldn’t shake that I wasn’t going to find someone who could understand me and be able to put up with me on a daily basis. The main criteria I had for finding someone to marry was that I needed to be able to “back their play.” This meant that I would be able to support how they treated and spoke to others in their lives. Knowing that I had created an unattainable set of criteria, I all but gave up looking. I finally met the woman of my dreams in the office I worked in at SunTrust Bank. She always walked by my desk staring straight ahead of her and never noticed me. This, of course, made me crazy and I went about looking for some way to both get her attention and keep it. We have been happily married since 2004. Find my way back to improvisation From 1996 until 2011 I was after one thing, Improvisation as Theatre. I wanted to make a type of improv that inspired others to think of improv as art in addition to being comedy. As the years went on I invested myself more and more until, around 2009, I started to burn out. I was stretching myself too thin and nothing I was touching was working well. Finally, in 2011 I was done. I closed the doors to my improv theatre and walked away to find another life. Anytime I thought about improv it made my stomach hurt and my bones ache. I decided I was done. That chapter of my life was over. I was pretty sure I would never return to it. Then, in 2013, a part of me woke up again. I started to think about improv in a way that seemed healthy and productive. In 2014 I was given the opportunity to use all my years of improv training and experience in a new way at DuMore Improv. Now it is clear to me that improv never left me. It was in my bones and in how I treated others. What left was what place it held in my life and what priority it took. Leave a nine to five job and work for me When I was hired by DuMore Improv in 2014, it was a few months after I had made the leap into entrepreneurship. When I left the safe confines of my nine to five job, it was one of the greatest feelings of my life. True, it was scary, but it was also exhilarating and freeing. Over the years I had seen multiple opportunities come and go that would have allowed me to leave my day job. Each time one of those opportunities came, something else happened that kept me in the safe zone. The epitome of these opportunities was in 2007 when I was just about to step out on my own and was confronted by the Sub Prime Mortage crisis. Finally, in 2014, I was handed a severance package along with the rest of my team. When I saw the amount of severance I would get, I realized that this was the opportunity I needed to get out there and make this happen. It is 2017 and I am still out here making it happen. Have a child I have had a rocky relationship with the idea of having children. When I was young I had a constant worry that if I were to have a child that something in me would cause me to leave my family the same way that my biological father left me. When I got past this fear I was met with another. For many years I feared that my anxiety would make me incapable of doing right by a child or being a good father. When I got past this fear I was met with a reality. In 2004 my wife and I got married. We began trying for a child. Years went by. We weren’t getting pregnant despite all of our reading and studies and it was constantly on our minds. We decided to try paying to have the sun and the moon align for us in a turkey baster, but still… no child. We decided to stop trying and just try to accept that we wouldn’t have kids. When I got past this, we were hit with a tragedy. In 2009 my wife and I finally got pregnant. We made it all the way to finding out her gender. The very next day, we lost her. It was horrible. Here is what I wrote to our friends and family: To all of our Friends and Family, Mary and I wanted to let you all know that sadly, we lost our little baby girl last night due to an unforeseeable and likewise unpreventable issue with her cervix. We are still at the hospital but will be going home today. We are both making it through and, though we are grieving, our faith is

While watching my son play in the yard with the neighborhood kids, I received a call from an old friend whom I had not spoken with in a very long time. He described his life now and what he had been through the past couple of years. Being the kind hearted listener that I am, I reminded him that I will always listen without judgement anytime he is willing to talk. He paused and then, in kindness, said, “I know you understand me, James,  and you may have been ready to listen, but I wasn’t in a place to tell.” This was a fantastic reminder to me that timing involves both parties. Being someone who can offer a safe, judgement free space and an ear to listen, with a focus on understanding, is only one part of the equation. The other person has to be ready. What someone needs in order to be ready to tell you what is happening on their side can be varied and even tenuous. When we offer a patient ear, we may need to practice a level of patience that transcends our normal conversational expectations. We may need to give time. Real time. More than we think is appropriate based on our own limited understanding of the situation.  Photo by Milos Simic on Unsplash

My experiment for today was to improvise a story based on ten random words from TextFixer’s Random Word Generator.  With no preconception of the story I would tell, I decided that I would use one generated word, in order, per sentence, and loop them until the story had some sort of ending. I gave myself the limitation of not using the delete key and only editing for grammar afterward and not for content. Here are the words: westwork, eight, brightly, elsewhere, elephants, wartime, already, ideal, headquarters, freakish. Results are below! Ethan stepped to the edge of Westwork Inc’s rooftop, his polished wing tip shoes peeking over the street forty floors below. It was three minutes till eight which meant he had three minutes to make a very difficult decision. He glanced at the Westwork illuminated logo three floors below him, its soulless neon shining brightly on the windows of condominiums one street over. Ethan wanted to be elsewhere, anywhere, even home, if it meant escaping his entangled fate. Footsteps sounded like elephants on the metal stairs leading upward to the roof exit. He turned around and faced the door, his adrenaline causing his heart to percuss upon his rib cage as though in wartime. The seconds were stretching as he breathed-in the end he knew was already upon him. He held out a small pistol he had taken from David’s desk drawer, though not ideal, it would speak to his intent. The door opened revealing a stream of armed FBI agents, two of whom he recognized from his last visit to headquarters. As they lined up around him, he made his decision and raised the pistol toward the nearest agent, his face broadening to a freakish grin. “Ethan, you don’t need to do this” Said one of the more familiar agents “Westwork doesn’t deserve your loyalty.” From his pocket, a chime played on his cell phone indicating it was eight o’clock. Two of the closest gunmen switched on their flashlights brightly illuminating the rain soaked roof. Elsewhere, sounds of a helicopter grew louder though not in sight. He remembered a story about elephants who learned to be helpless when, as babies, their tails were tied to a stake in the ground. Ethan let the gun go limp in his hand as he stepped backward off the ledge, his final contribution to the wartime project, to Westwork inc, and to David. An agent rushed forward to catch him, but it was already too late, and Ethan was already free. Shoulders of Giants (what does this mean?)  Photo by Ryan Young on Unsplash  TextFixer Random Generator  

This morning I was reading through the About page of my friend Justin Blackman over at http://prettyflycopy.com/ where I was reminded of a wonderful poem by Shel Silverstein.   Hippo’s Hope –a poem by Shel Silverstein There once was a hippo who wanted to fly — Fly-hi-dee, try-hi-dee, my-hi-dee-ho. So he sewed him some wings that could flap through the sky — Sky-hi-dee, fly-hi-dee, why-hi-dee-go. He climbed to the top of a mountain of snow — Snow-hi-dee, slow-hi-dee, oh-hi-dee-hoo. With the clouds high above and the sea down below — Where-hi-dee, there-hi-dee, scare-hi-dee-boo. (Happy ending) And he flipped and he flapped and he bellowed so loud — Now-hi-dee, loud-hi-dee, proud-hi-dee-poop. And he sailed like an eagle, off into the clouds — High-hi-dee, fly-hi-dee, bye-hi-dee-boop. (Unhappy ending) And he leaped like a frog and he fell like a stone — Stone-hi-dee, lone-hi-dee, own-hi-dee-flop. And he crashed and he drowned and broke all his bones — Bones-hi-dee, moans-hi-dee, groans-hi-dee-glop. (Chicken ending) He looked up at the sky and looked down at the sea — Sea-hi-dee, free-hi-dee, whee-hi-dee-way. And he turned and went home and had cookies and tea — That’s hi-dee, all hi-dee, I have to say. Did you read the poem all the way through? Good. Question 1: Which choice was your knee jerk reaction as the way the hippo should go? When you read the choices, did you think “Well if it were me, I would…”? I know people that fit into both the “try” and the “chicken” category. I know those who would try because they believe that they can succeed even if their project or idea seems like a hippo who is about to break all his bones. I know those who would go home and be fine that they were called a chicken because they survived. Let someone else take crazy risks, I’ll be smart and live to stay safe another day. I also know those who would want to go home but would bristle at being in the category of “chicken” and that would spur them on. These are the Marty McFly’s of our world. They are not going with their own instincts but instead allowing themselves to make a choice based on the thoughts and opinions of others. Question 2: Which was the most satisfying ending for the hippo? When you read that there was a chance the hippo could fly, did you lean toward that being the best ending? He wants to fly, he risks everything and succeeds? Was it more satisfying to see the hippo break all his bones? Serves you right hippo… What made you even consider you could fly? Or perhaps you enjoyed the final ending most. Would you rather the danger be averted entirely? Perhaps just feeling the tension released for the hippo was more satisfying than the idea that he might succeed and fly. Question 3: Do you give others the same advice you give yourself? When you answered the first two questions, did you choose the same approach as you did ending? If it is someone else taking the risk would you rather see them take the plunge than taking the risk yourself? If you are watching someone in your same position make a choice, do you believe that they should go for it, even if you would probably play it safe? Take another look at the poem. Do you give others the same advice you give yourself? Do you advise your children to play it safe when you yourself tried to fly? Vice-versa? Do you see a difference in how you would give advice now than at another season in your life? When someone else is taking the risk, do you tell yourself a story that they are more likely to succeed? Finally, do you think that you will regret the moments where you did not try to fly?  Shoulders of Giants (what does this mean?) Photo by Stefan Steinbauer on Unsplash