Practical, tactical, and maybe a bit weird at first… but possibly life changing. That’s how I would summarize the next tool I’d like to discuss. One of the points of Hope and Venom is to share distillations of thought and exploration as something actionable.

The Two Chair Exercise is one of my favorites.

It’s based on IFS — Internal Family Systems — which is a method of exploring and understanding your inner world in an approachable way. If you’ve ever had a conversation with yourself (and you 100% have), this is for you. The way I describe it: IFS is a way to speak with versions of yourself — your inner child, your inner adolescent, your shadow self — in a way that is productive and insightful. One thing worth saying upfront: even if it’s not literally true, it is absolutely helpful to assume you are actually conversing with distinct Parts of your Self. The frame earns its keep.

Here’s how it works. Grab two chairs and set them up facing one another. Sit in the first, and open a conversation with the inner part you want to connect with. Then physically get up, move to the opposite chair, and answer as that part. The physical act of switching matters — it’s not metaphorical, it’s mechanical, and that’s the point. Every time I’ve done this, something surprises me.

You may feel resistance. Set it aside if you can.

The exercise doesn’t have to stay internal, either. You can use the second chair to speak with someone else entirely — a friend, a parent, a fictional character, even an experience you’ve had. This is where the exercise opens into something bigger. I believe that everything is energy in different forms — and that’s not mysticism, it’s physics. The relationships you have with other people and things are themselves entities: the you, the me, and the we. The Two Chair Exercise gives you a way to speak directly to the we — to pull something ephemeral and elusive into something tangible, tactical, and true.

That’s the whole game, really.

Until next time,

-Paul Michael

Sometimes inspiration comes from unexpected places.

A couple weeks ago, I was down with the flu. It’s been a brutal season this year; everyone seems to be getting sick. Anyhow, as I often do when I’m recuperating, I took some time to get caught up on some shows and movies. Apple TV had recently released a film called The Gorge, starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy. It got mixed reviews, but I gave it a shot anyway. I'm glad I did.

If you haven’t seen the film, the basic premise is that two highly trained snipers are independently sent to stand guard over opposite sides of a gorge in a remote location. The job is simple - maintain the grounds, and make sure that nothing pops out of the gorge that shouldn’t; maintain and contain.

I won’t spoil it just in case you choose to see it yourself, but from watching the preview for the film, we learn that the two of them wind up getting to know one another, and ultimately fall in love.

What struck me about the film was how effective it was in telling the story despite the relative lack of dialog. The two characters (Levi, played by Teller, and Drasa, played by Taylor-Joy) are completely isolated from the rest of the world, and can really only communicate via written notes and high-powered binoculars to read what the other has written. It underscores the power that words possess, and drives home the comfort that we find in the company of another.

At one point, Levi tells Drasa about a poem he wrote for her. But, we’re only shown a snippet of his work… and this is where something stirred in me. I decided to finish Levi’s poem to Drasa. If you’ve seen the film, this will make much more sense, but I think it stands on its own well enough.

Here it is. The bolded words are Levi’s. The rest are mine.

She Collapsed the Night

I did not know, I knew how to hope

Did not know, I’d long been hoping

To behold you,

Coping only to be held by you

You - Unshatterable alabaster

You - Starlight carved by chainsaw

You - Dancing fire across the dawning gaze collapsed

Unyielding in the delight of your clarity

An archangel’s kiss pressed into stone and sinew

Changed everything for me…

Me - Adrift yet resolute

Me - Simmering chaos, incarnate

Me - Unlocked in the winds of your night

Collapsed now, we stand in the day

Sun drenched and breath full

Moving as one

I know now what I longed to know

What it feels like to hold, not hope

To have

To be

With you, atop the chasm’s night

Now collapsed

Once I finished the poem, I still had more in me. So, I used my favorite AI tool for song creation (Suno), and created a couple different versions of She Collapsed the Night.

Hope Version :: Venom Version

Until next time,

-PMVP

Pretend you’re dying… More on that in a bit.

It’s always easier to solve someone else’s problems, isn’t it?

Start lifting weights.
Break up with the toxic partner.
Stop climbing the corporate ladder when you’re clearly an entrepreneur at heart.

Obvious… to everyone but the person living it.

But here’s the thing: everyone is fighting a battle inside that no one else can see. Each of us moves through the world with a certain architecture—our beliefs, behaviors, defense mechanisms—some inherited, some constructed. That architecture shapes how we show up.

And if we want to get better at something? That means changing ourselves in some way.

But change—even change for the better—triggers something primal. That ancient survival mechanism buried deep in our brains doesn’t care whether a new version of you is better. It only cares whether it’s safe. You’re still going to have to learn how to survive as that new version—and that takes work.

It also takes perspective, and that’s hard to come by. You’ve been you your entire life, but you’ve never actually seen yourself. Not in person. You’ve never stood face to face with yourself. (Weird, right?) Even if you have a twin, that’s them—not you. You’re also the only person you’ve ever been with 100% of the time, so maybe it’s worth making that relationship a good one.

So how do we gain perspective?
How do we get that rare, powerful clarity we seem to have when solving other people’s problems?

Here’s one way: try the Swan Song Exercise.

For those who’ve seen Swan Song, starring Mahershala Ali, this will sound familiar. The basic premise: you’ve just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. No one else knows—not yet. But medical technology can create your clone—the hardware, not the software. It’s up to you to teach the clone how to be you, so it can seamlessly step into your life without anyone noticing you’re gone.

Simple, right?

Not exactly. The Swan Song Exercise isn’t about legacy—it’s about honesty.

Your job is to train this clone. And you must do it well. Your loved ones can't know you’re gone. There’s no room for ego, no place for self-delusion. You have to become an observer of your own life. A teacher. A witness. A mirror.

The deeper you go, the more you’ll uncover.
The stories you cling to.
The rules you follow without realizing.
The pain you hide.
The patterns you protect.

Think you’re up for it?

Here are ten questions to get you started.

10 Questions to Begin Your Swan Song Exercise

1. What daily habits and routines would you need to meticulously teach your clone for others not to notice the switch?

2. What phrases, expressions, or verbal tics do you frequently use that your clone would need to adopt?

3. What personal stories or memories do you reference often that your clone would need to know intimately?

4. Which relationships in your life would be most challenging for your clone to maintain authentically, and why?

5. What are the unspoken rules you follow in different social contexts (work, family, friends) that your clone would need to understand?

6. What triggers your strongest emotional reactions, both positive and negative, that your clone would need to prepare for?

7. What are your core values and principles that guide your decision-making, especially in difficult situations?

8. What private struggles or doubts do you carry that your clone would need to convincingly portray?

9. What aspects of your personality do others value most that your clone absolutely must embody?

10. What would your clone need to understand about your relationship with yourself—your inner dialogue, self-criticism, or self-compassion?

If you really do the work, if you answer honestly, something strange might happen.

You may start to see yourself more clearly.
You may grieve parts of you that never got the care they needed.
You may forgive the version of you that was just trying to survive.

And you may realize the person worth becoming… isn’t your clone.

It’s the you who finally sees.

Until next time,

-Paul Michael

Bloodlines, you know.

Spiritlines—maybe not.

Think of it like this: just as Peter Attia distinguishes between lifespan and healthspan, I want to offer a distinction that’s equally clarifying. It might stretch the bounds of belief. But like many things that matter, even if it’s not literally true, it’s profoundly useful. I like ideas like that—frameworks that act like tuning forks for the soul.

But let’s rewind a bit.

In 1971, philosopher John Rawls proposed a way to build a just society. He called it the Veil of Ignorance. The thought experiment went like this: design a society from scratch—but before entering it, you don’t get to know who you’ll be. Not your gender, race, class, sexuality, abilities—nothing. You’re just a soul, waiting to drop in.

Would you design a society that allows slavery, discrimination, or inherited cruelty? Of course not. You could be born into the bottom rung. So instead, you’d create a world with upward mobility, protections, dignity, and opportunity for all. That’s the point.

Your bloodline is the chain of ancestors whose DNA built your body. The couplings and crossings that shaped your eyes, your bones, your reflexes. It’s the biology behind the being.

Your Spiritline, though—that’s something older. It’s the thread of souls you’ve lived as before this one. Across timelines. Across worlds. The hidden continuity of your essence. It explains why you’re drawn to certain people, obsessed with certain themes, terrified of things no one else seems to notice. These are the lessons you chose to learn in what I like to call the prelife locker room.

You didn’t show up blank. You showed up aimed.

⸻

Spiritlines and Future Selves

Now let’s bring these two threads together.

Imagine, just for a moment, that you will return.

Not as yourself, but as someone entirely new. You don’t get to pick. You might come back as a different gender. A different color. A different body. A different continent. Different challenges. Different privileges.

Now look at your current life. Your current reach. Your current ability to shape the world that future-you might inherit.

If you knew your next life would depend on the ripple effects of this one—

Wouldn’t you try to leave behind better soil?

More love, more justice, more beauty in the system?

Wouldn’t you build a world that you’d be honored to return to, regardless of who you are next time?

⸻

Spiritline Metrics to Live By

• Make every day one you’d be proud to relive.

Not just survive—but shape. Create. Love. Heal. That’s your echo.

• Design the world as if you’ll be born into it again.

Because maybe you will be.

• Leave behind fewer walls and more thresholds.

Future-you might be knocking.

• Cultivate timelines you’d want your children to inherit—even if you never have them.

• Protect what you may one day become.

The vulnerable. The different. The forgotten. The powerful.

This isn’t morality for morality’s sake.

It’s strategy.

It’s Spiritline Ethics—the long game of the soul.

Until next time,

-Paul Michael

Every year when we do our budgets at my company, we practice a methodology called “Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB),” the basic premise of which is to start with a completely blank budget and add in your projections for the year to come. Before we switched to zero based budgeting, we used to simply review the budget from last year, make some tweaks, and move along. It was easier, but it allowed for budgetary detritus to linger undetected (sometimes for years). Now we have to start from scratch every time, which takes longer, but largely eliminates the possibility of accidentally carrying budget items you shouldn’t. Zero based also forces you to really think through the time period to come, and helps you to be more accurate in your forecasting.

What if we were to apply Zero Based to our Execution in general? What would that look like, and what might it change?

You and I both know that time is precious. Indeed, it is your only non-renewable resource. Time is also the thing that more and more people want more and more of from you, and it can be equally as seductive to say yes as it is painful to say no. Given these twin forces, it makes only sense to walk through your commitments and your strategy from time to time to assess, and potentially refactor. If you've ever felt like you were suffocating in an endless stream of meetings, action items, initiatives, notes you've taken, and the like, you know it can be very difficult to keep pace with it all and deliver the excellence you intend to in every domain of your life that you wish to. What’s worse is that you likely tend to focus on the frustration of not having done what you failed to get to instead of being grateful and excited about what you did accomplish. Starting to sound like a Death Spiral, no?

Enter Zero Based Execution (ZBE).

Begin with declaring Project Zero, and give yourself permission to invest some energy into clearing space. Treat it like a thought experiment if that helps you to put your ego and your fears aside for a bit. Breathe into the process, and get excited - this might just be the best thing you’ve done for yourself in a while. So, now you’re looking at a blank page, an empty calendar, and a To Do list with nothing on it. PERFECT. Now, as you think about adding commitments back, let’s layer in some guidelines.

The Seven Tenets of Zero Based Execution

1.) Ruthlessly Prioritize Replenishment

2.) Identify the 80/20 the 80/20

3.) Start in the Middle

4.) Play the Orchestra

5.) Command the Frame

6.) Yeses Must Be Earned (Default No)

7.) Remain Vigilant

Ruthlessly prioritize replenishment is listed first for obvious reasons, but let’s be clear on what we mean by “replenishment.” Steven Covey referred to this as Sharpening the Saw, and it is meant to encompass the areas of your being that require renewal - physical, social, mental, spiritual. Literally, what I’m saying here is to schedule these items FIRST. Block off your vacation time now. Secure time slots in the morning, afternoon, and evening to ensure that your mediation, journaling, family time, and dinners with friends are booked. Also schedule a buffer day that is sacred and non-negotiable to give yourself a time slot to deal with the problems and shifts that will invariably arise.

Now that you have the first set of commitments carved in stone, it’s time to identify the 80/20 of the 80/20. Also called the Pareto Principle, the punchline here is that 80% of your results spring from 20% of your efforts. But, if you apply 80/20 to 80/20, you see that you get 64% of your results from 4% of your efforts. FOUR PERCENT of your efforts give you MOST of your results! And, for those of you who might already be skipping ahead, yes, if you apply 80/20 again you see that about 50% of your results comes from about 1% of your efforts (technically it’s 51.2% from 0.8%, but let’s keep it simple). Well, we already identified the 1% - that’s your rest and replenishment as described above. Your challenge is to figure out the remainder of the 4%.

Start in the Middle is all about intentionally doing things a little differently so as to shake up your routines and automatic thinking. So, when you’re planning your year, start in July. When you’re planning your week, start with Wednesday. When you’re planning your quarter, start with Week 6, and so on.

Play the Orchestra is one of my favorites, as anyone who knows me professionally will attest. The simple concept here is this - just because something need to be done, that does not mean that you personally have to do it. This is fairly obvious, but it’s also true that things tend to sneak into your day/week/month that you could and should delegate or outsource. Not all tasks are like that, however… if you want the benefits of exercise then you have to go lift the weights. Apart from any of the replenishment work (the 1%, as described earlier), make it very difficult to assign anything to yourself. If you aren’t allowed to do it, but it needs to get done, who or what will you task with the action item?

Psychology underpins much of life and leadership, very often in a profound way that can go entirely unnoticed. Commanding the Frame deals with this directly, and shifts your (likely) default wiring from focused on lack to focused on abundance - this is the antidote to the Death Spiral I briefly discussed earlier. It starts with changing your expectations - expect that NOTHING will get done. Yes, you read that correctly - NO.THING. will get done. Now, as you DO get things done, you’ll be happy and grateful that the “DONE” list is growing, whereas before you may have felt fatigued by the sheer size of the To Do list. Clever, yes?

So far, so good, but how do you keep your ZBE plan moving forward without reintroducing the very things that slowed you down to begin with? Make “Yes” very, very difficult. Before you think about agreeing to anything, you need to be extremely focused on why you will allow something into your schedule. I’d go as far as to say that every request that comes your way is an automatic “No” unless it earns a yes. To that end, here are some crafted “No” replies that should help:

• If you don’t want to do it, and won’t:

  • That’s not the sort of thing I can commit to, unfortunately. Perhaps [insert person/place/idea] would help?

  • Strategy - Redirect

• If you don’t want to do it, but will:

  • Let’s talk about that. I’m sure we can come up with a plan that makes sense, but I’m going to ask you to meet me in the middle.

  • Strategy - Negotiate

• If you do want to do it, but can’t:

  • Honestly I’d love to, truly, but I can’t prioritize that right now over the other commitments I have. Please ping me again next time this is available!

  • Strategy - Keep Door Open

And lastly, Remain Vigilant. Vigilance is a cornerstone of life and leadership; you have to stick with your practices come hell, high water, or hangover. The Zero Based Execution strategy is not a set it and forget it approach. Life happens, things get in the way, emergencies pop up. So, give yourself some grace, stay humble, and run through the Seven Tenets again and again. You’ll never be done, and that’s exciting, because that means that you can always improve.

Until next time,

-Paul Michael

Do you remember the scene in the movie Fight Club where Tyler threatens to kill the convenience store clerk unless he changes his life and starts down the path of becoming a veterinarian?

Death, it appears, can be quite useful.

The scene is stirring; visceral. It’s almost impossible not to think about what you would experience in that situation… the thoughts that would race, the regrets that would sincerely inhabit you, the feelings you’d be overcome with. But then, set FREE (!!!!), now you’re playing with house money, as Ryan Holiday likes to say. What joy there is now, having come so close…

One of the things I appreciate most about my own brushes with Death is that they equipped me with a deepened perspective. Those day-to-day slights and aggravations before? Energy vampires. Now? Laughable. Well… most of the time any way; I am still human, after all :)

So, if you’ve never given it much thought, I challenge you to really think about your Death. The Stoics did this rather frequently, as referenced above. It’s jarring. It’s scary. It’s uncomfortable. But, it can be incredibly insightful, and therefore very much worth the investment.

If you’ve ever come close to death, chances are you’ve already given this some thought. But, whether you’ve thought about it before or not, I think it’s useful to perform the meditation.

Here’s a reflection taken from The Journal of Humanistic Psychology, written by and 82 year old man who is in the process of accepting Death:

"If I had my life to live over, I’d try to make more mistakes next time. I would limber up, I would be crazier than I’ve been on this trip. I know very few things I’d take seriously any more. I would take more chances, I would take more trips, I would scale more mountains, I would swim more rivers, and I would watch more sunsets. I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans.

I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones. You see……I was one of those people who lived prophylactically and sensibly and sanely, hour after hour and day after day. Oh, I’ve had my moments and if I had it to do all over again, I’d have many more of them. In fact, I’d try not to have anything else, just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of my day. I’ve been one of those people who never went anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a gargle, a raincoat, and a parachute.

If I had it to do all over again, I’d travel lighter, much lighter than I have. I would start barefoot earlier in the Spring, and I’d stay that way later in the Fall. And I would ride more merry-go-rounds, and catch more gold rings, and greet more people, and pick more flowers, and dance more often. If I had it to do all over again.

But you see, I don’t."

So, if you’re ready, let’s give it a shot. There are a few different ways to approach this, but one I think works well is to use an online tombstone builder, and create your own monument. Use [yesterday] for your date of Death (no need to temp the Fates, of course!), print out your tombstone, and then just let the thoughts and feelings come to you. Write them down if you’d like, or simply sit with them for a while and just notice.

A little weird, right? Indeed it is. But doing things differently is all part of the growth process, in my view.

Here’s another investment I firmly believe in - I think it’s everyone’s individual responsibility to investigate their mental foundation and frameworks from time to time, and put effort into improving them. This is another reason why I find the Death Meditation helpful; it can enable you to see very clearly, very quickly.

Clear vision leads to crisp action, and crisp action leads to creation. It’s a beautiful thing!

Until next time,

-Paul Michael

I recently came across Seth Godin’s work, The Icarus Deception, which is an excellent book about seeing the world a bit differently and then making choices to better align with the reality you want to create. Early on in the book, Godin reminds us that the tale of Icarus is about more than a warning against hubris… it’s also a warning about settling for too little.

Brief recap of the story you might know, paraphrased from Godin’s book: Icarus and his father Daedalus were imprisoned for upsetting King Minos, so they hatched a plan to escape. Daedalus made a set of wings for himself and his son, and the breakout was underway.

Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, for fear of the wings getting ruined… but he also cautioned the boy against flying too low, since the sea would ruin the wings too.

Fast forward a few millennia, and what most people recall is the first part - the caution that is translated as a warning against hubris. But the lesser-known caution, against flying too low (not reaching your potential), is equally as deadly. One is Real Death, the other is the slow kind of death that leads to quotes like Thoreau’s, “most people lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Like we learned in the famous children’s story Goldilocks, too little is just as bad as too much; the goal is Just Right. The challenge is to determine what Just Right is for you, for now. That last bit - for now - is where I’d like to focus for a moment, if I may.

In my experience, oftentimes we need to slow down a bit and step back a touch in order to get it Just Right. But fairly often we think that by slowing down, or taking a step back, or downsizing a little bit we’re somehow broadcasting failure to the world.

Bullshit.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is stop digging once you realize that you are, in fact, in a hole. “If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else,” as Yogi Berra once said.

There are countless applications of this concept (which I’ll call the Icarus Range or the Goldilocks Range, interchangeably). Sometimes it appears to be all about maximizing the positive by direct action and steady focus. Other times, it seems like you should be focused on minimizing error conditions such that all that remains is the success you’re after. An example of the former might be lifting weights at the gym; golf an example of the latter.

But really, in my view, it’s about using both - maximizing the positive and minimizing the negative. What are we driving towards? What are we determined to stay away from? Depending on the problem you’re trying to solve, it’s a useful exercise to map out the Icarus Range, and determine what Just Right looks like - and what exists outside of the Range on either side.

Now we can run the premedatatio malorum exercise, and do our level best to inoculate against problems in advance. What might go wrong? What might come up? How will we deal with distractions? How to do get back on the rails if we’re derailed? Etc.

Depending on the goal, the Icarus Range might be rather wide... or quite narrow. In golf, for instance, at first it’s all about just making some solid contact by getting your mechanics close enough to do so. Then, let’s hit it straight. Then the right distance. Fast forward a while, and now the Goldilocks Range is a bit more narrow: the ball is above your feet, you’re 147 yards out, there’s a cross breeze, there’s a sand trap, and the pin is towards the front of the green.

As Orrin Hudson once said, “If you know the combination to the lock, it doesn't matter who you are; it has to open for you.” So, the next time you’re trying to level up, or solve a problem, or just try something new, give some thought to our friends Goldilocks and Icarus.

Until next time,

-Paul Michael

The last time I bought a new computer, I noticed something. It happened when I was getting iTunes set up, and the songs that I had previously purchased were downloading. The default method was to download all the music at the same time, and as a result, the process was going VERY slowly; it was the classic “mile wide but millimeter deep” problem that happens when we try to fracture across too many commitments and then get nothing done all that well as a result. So, I took a peek, and the answer was simple - deselect the “Allow Simultaneous Downloads” option. All of a sudden, song after song was downloaded in rapid succession, and the best part? I could listen to music while the rest of my library downloaded to my computer.

I relearned this lesson recently when I was testing a theory during one of my 12 Week Year execution periods. During one 12 Week Year, I chose 12 goals, and tried to accomplish them all. The result? Zero got accomplished. The next 12 Week Year, I chose one goal. The result? I accomplished eight of the previous twelve.

Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Well, yes, at first glance it sure does. But thinking about this more deeply, it becomes clear that slowing down and really focusing effort on fewer things is the precise way to get more done, because the quality of your execution is likely to improve. The higher the quality, the less likely you’ll introduce any of the seven types of muda (waste) into your work - you’ll be less likely to have to retrace your steps, less likely to overcomplicate, less likely to overdo it, etc. Also, when you organize around a single goal, you speed up the decisioning process such that the right answer tends to become more clear, more quickly. Whereas before you may have been constantly asking yourself what the right next step is, or which action will yield the most value, now that you have sharpened your focus the answers become more obvious.

When you do things more slowly, you tend to do them more smoothly. And smooth execution speeds up the trip - slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

If you choose to practice this, you may notice that you’ll send fewer emails with glaring typos. Or perhaps you’ll make fewer comments in the heat of the moment that perhaps you shouldn’t have. Choices made from emotion, instead of equanimity, often produce regret. In any leadership context, equanimity - evenness of mind - is crucial. You need to see the whole picture from the high level down to the details clearly, and do your best to make decisions that have the impact you intend.

I like this approach for another reason - it tends to help you focus on the basics, get them right, and stave off problems before they are spawned. Professional athletes drill on the basics over and over and over again (think of a quarterback practicing footwork) so they can perform at their best in the moment. Oftentimes, problems that are presenting on the surface trace back to a something that’s a little bit off deeper down… drilling yourself on the basics is a way to inoculate against this.

The question now becomes, what are the basics that we should drill on? There are a few options here, but for now let’s just focus on the foundation - keeping your physical, mental, and psychological health strong. Block off some non-negotiable time on your calendar each day to work on these areas, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Meditate. Journal. Exercise. Read. Replenish.

There are any number of strategies to approach each of those suggestions, of course, but the most important thing you can do is just start doing them, and figure out what works for you via action - think by doing.

Until next time,

-Paul Michael

You know the one. That voice that creeps beneath the surface, the one that laughs at you when you fall and whispers in your ear to make the wrong choice. The Shadow seems to delight in your suffering, and appears to want only to make sure that you stay weak, stay tired, stay... less. What the hell is going on here? Why do we have this part of ourselves, and how do we GET RID OF IT?? Feels like that’s the right answer, doesn’t it? Something inside is hurting you, slowing you down, holding you back… so the first urge is often to destroy it.

However…

As is the case with many things, what is presenting on the surface is different than what is underneath - layer upon layer down in your psyche. What if we chose to lean into the Shadow instead of attempting to destroy it? What is it really trying to tell us, and where did it come from in the first place?

I’ve thought about this a fair amount over the years, and what I’ve found to be the most useful explanation of what the Shadow is, is this: it’s your survival mechanism. The Shadow is an integral part of you then, and it should be partnered with, not abandoned. When you’re giving yourself a hard time about something you did poorly, for instance, that’s just you trying to protect yourself from failure. The method may not be pleasant, but the principle is a good one.

So, if a parasite is something that infects and causes disease, sickness, or even death in its host, then yes we should absolutely look to avoid infection and we should also absolutely eviscerate any infection we find. The problem is, I think that we tend to see the Shadow as a parasite, not a symbiote.

A symbiote is something that makes its host better… more. The host provides a place for the symbiote to live, grow, and be nourished, and in return, the symbiote enhances the host’s life in some way, or in many ways. In the case of the Shadow, I think that there’s a tremendous opportunity to do just that - make it your symbiote.

But how?

Well, it starts with setting the Intention to connect to the Shadow, to listen, and to learn from it. You have to be the one who initiates the contact, and you must be the one to step up and lead both you and the Shadow through the process. You’re the CEO of your life. You can do it.

After you’ve set your Intention, just listen. The next time you hear that voice start to chirp about how you did something wrong or fucked something up or fell on your face, engage with it. Create a safe space for it, then ask it questions. Maybe something like, “I hear what you’re saying, and I’d like to understand your perspective better. I really appreciate you trying to keep me safe, but when you speak to me like it’s not productive. What I’d love to do is figure out a way to see things from your point of view, so I can do a better job of making choices.”

Yeah, it’s a little weird. And yeah, it might feel a bit awkward at first. But the prize at the end is turning that Inner Critic into an Inner Coach, ala Jack Canfield’s suggestion in The Success Principles.

There are plenty more exercises like that, so if that one doesn’t work for you I can suggest others. If you DO choose to engage with your Shadow, I’d love to know how it goes for you, and if you’d like to know more about this topic, please let me know!

Until next time,

-Paul

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