Are You the Captain of Your Soul? The Choices One Makes

In the poem, "Invictus" by English poet, William Ernest Henley, the last stanza reads as follows:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

South African President Nelson Mandela found solace and affirmation in this poem during his decades in Robben Island Prison as others controlled his circumstances and even whether he lived or died. He made a choice that no one would strip his dignity nor take away his mastery of his own soul. He would own his decisions and actions and never blame them upon external circumstance.

Just a few decades earlier in the hell of Auschwitz, Dr. Viktor Frankl had found refuge from the otherworldly hell by cultivating his inner life. He also resisted the temptation to allow circumstances to determine the choices he made for himself.

In his book, Man's Search For Meaning, he speaks of the brutality, the deprivation of freedom, sleep and food and the temptation to fall into hopelessness. Underneath it all was a fight for survival that laid open one's soul.

"The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity -even under the most difficult circumstances- to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult decision may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his suffering or not."

Who knows what the future holds. A few of us will need to face circumstances as bleak as those faced by Nelson Mandela or Viktor Frankl, but most of us will not. We will be tested on a soul level when faced with divorce or substance abuse. We will be challenged when we have an opportunity to take unfair advantage of a situation to pocket extra money. We will lower our standards, behave selfishly or be creatively unethical because of the pressures of a situation with consequences.

Just as the fight for survival or unjust imprisonment could be used as an excuse for rage and the unleashing of evil, we will have good reasons for our own failures to captain our souls. I am not writing for the evil nor am I writing for the perfect.

In July of 2002, my wife of 16 years asked for a divorce. While we had been struggling in our relationship for a period of time; I still loved her, was committed to our marriage and cared deeply about our three children. This divorce demand was a relief in terms of getting the issue out into the open but was also an internal seismic event. I began my education in divorce and sought counseling help to gain both assistance and perspective. This unwanted destruction of my marriage became the most significant opportunity for me to become and remain the captain of my soul but it was a struggle to do so.

Divorce in America is common and has become a spectator sport. Many people will take sides and then encourage the participant they are rooting for to be selfish or to dole out punishment. It is hard not to feel victimized by circumstances that you can not control. The disruption of your life and the losses to what you've built are real, even if you make it all the way through the process while doing your best to be a good person. It is even harder to regain your sense of optimism and inner peace. Inner peace is the compass, the source of bearing, and optimism for the future is the prevailing wind, the power to move forward, for the captain of the soul.

We did finally divorce after five years of separation, a period in which our children moved most of the way to adulthood. The failure remains a disappointment, but today I primarily give weight to my failure to provide my children with something better. I truly wanted to provide my children with something better than my own parents failed marriage and the broken apart family that resulted. Alas, all that one can control is one's choices and subsequent actions. My choices and actions will need to suffice as a small legacy to my children.

I have also chosen to remain the captain of my soul in professional situations. Years ago, I attended a meeting where the executives were discussing upcoming projects. The head of facilities reviewed a project he had been working on for six months and was about to implement to install new electronic door hardware on about 350 doors in our major facility for a cost of $200,000. The hardware was on its way and the installers were set to go. At the time of the meeting I had no responsibility for the facility. Because of past work, I knew that at least some of the doors had fire proof cores that contained asbestos. I spoke up and raised the issue. I asked if they had tested the doors. My boss very much wanted the project to move forward and began to voice his disapproval. In an agitated manner he dismissed my concerns and told the manager to go forward with the project. I strongly objected until they agreed to put the project on hold until the doors were all tested. 

After the meeting, my boss invited me into his office and chastised me for both having "higher" standards and for imposing those standards on others. Who did I think I was to be setting standards for others? He demanded to know. I had delayed a project and embarrassed him in a meeting, but I had also prevented the inadvertent release of asbestos particles into the air due to sawing or drilling into those doors. My relationship with this person slowly and steadily spiraled downward from that point and led to me leaving a good position and decent paying job, but I remained the captain of my soul.

This is not about perfection. I lay no such claim as I am clearly a faulty human being not a divine entity.

It is more of a life stance. The leader, the creator, the artist, the builder all must choose not to be the victim of circumstance. My life is not a "reaction" it is rather a chosen "action".

The captain knows that the ocean is unpredictable and unforgiving, beautiful and sometimes deadly but the ocean is also the source of life and container where life is lived.

To be the master of your fate and be the captain of your soul, you must embrace the suffering that comes your way and remain brave, unselfish and dignified in its very presence. Be bowed to God but not to your own circumstances.

Are You Living an Unexamined Life? The Journey

If Socrates contention that an unexamined life is not worth living, is correct. What is an appropriate response for a thoughtful and compassionate person?

I am at a point, and have been for about a year, where I am thoughtfully examining both the outcomes and patterns of my life. While the journey of my life has been for the most part enjoyable, there have been times of intense emotional pain and occasional disappointment.



At 52, I find myself feeling very different than I did in my 20s and 30s, which is to be expected. However, I also find myself feeling quite different than I did in my early 40s, and that awareness is intriguing to me. How can I be so much more at peace with reality than I was ten years ago? In many ways, the outer world is not better, whether looking at my home life, my finances or my current professional endeavors; it is more of a struggle today. Between divorce and my three children entering into college and adulthood, my reserves have been depleted. I also lost a significant amount of money as the direct result of the economic collapse of 2008 both in terms of investments and professionally.

While plugging away day-to-day in a small consulting firm and teaching a couple of college courses, the economic pause of the last two years, has thus far limited my rewards. I have had more potential business relationships end prematurely than blossom in the past three years and I do look at how my actions limited those relationships. On my own part, I turned down two offers that were not quite right but workable as I could not get the other party to see the full value of my long-term participation in their ventures. I have been confronted with ethical dilemmas, bullying and unkempt promises. While I have stood my ground, I have not fully defended myself and my legal rights.

During this same period of time, home life has been difficult with problems thrust upon me by others as well as the problems that were the direct result of choices I have made. I have had to deal with a few volatile situations and keep them from escalating, which is both humbling and frustrating. I could take on a cynical view of the world and yet I have not.

One of my sources of wisdom is Buckminster Fuller, a genius but also a man who dealt with failure and serious life problems. At a low point in his life, he came to the conclusion that all he had learned in the past should be set aside. The patterns of the past had led him to his current low point, so what good were they? He vowed to go forward living his life as a fifty year experiment, that is judge each situation with openness and attention.

I began attempting this philosophy of living nearly a decade ago. It is has allowed me to be both true to myself and accepting of consequences during a tumultuous period. I am not harsh with myself but observant. Sometimes my actions are the cause of a result that I wanted or did not want. Yet often it is clear that my influence on the behavior of others is quite limited and that my direct actions did not change the results at all.

Steven Covey in the book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, speaks to the three circles emanating outward from an individual. The first circle is the circle of control. It is a relatively small circle and mastery of it provides benefits. Those benefits however are limited. The next circle going outward is the circle of influence, which is both the circle demanding the most skill and the circle with the most potential for creating. The third and outermost circle is the circle of concern. This third circle is a trap for most of us as we become concerned about all kinds of causes, issues and problems that lie outside of our circle of influence.



I have worked during the past decade as well on testing my circle of concern against my circle of influence. I have done this not just on a political or professional issue but also with regards to my inner circle of friends and family. Anyone with children, even adult children, knows that our concern for our children nearly always exceeds our influence upon them in the short term. Children teach us that the most powerful aspects of our influence often lag our actions-behaviors-words by years.

Let's get back to Socrates. I do not contend that I have perfected self-examination but point out merely that I have attempted it and continue to do so. With regards to the more subtle meaning of Socrates statement, I have the following take. By examining ones life it becomes possible to true up ones values and beliefs against ones actions. By examining the results that occur over time it becomes possible to see truth as reflected back by the world. Self worth is built by the iterations of being aware of one's self and in responding not merely reacting to life. Since the death of our body and the loss of all possessions is the end result of this life, maybe taking our own unique journey is the point of examination.

A Walk on the Edge of the Woods

There are more animals living on the edge of the woods than there are in the deep woods or in the meadow. This zone provides both an abundance and a diversity of food as well as ample protective cover. In the meadow, raptors fly above and silhouettes bring the attention of every predator. In the deep woods, the lack of sunlight on the forest floor creates a zone that provides little sustenance; animals climb the trees or cluster near streams and lakes where there are openings to nutrients.

In our society, the public life is out in the meadows and the media provides attention to those that dwell there. While rewards can accrue to those that live in the meadows, there are raptors above and predators of every type examining the silhouettes. Do you seek a public life? If so, what drives your desire? Does attention translate to inner worth?

Are you one of those people that would rather hide in the deep woods? Do you do this for protection or is it an act of rejection? In many ways there is a peacefulness and wholeness to time spent in the deep woods and I would encourage everyone to choose to withdraw inward from time to time. However, complete disengagement is a path without sufficient nutrition for the soul and the ego.
I choose to walk on the edge of the woods. I purposefully wander into the meadow from time to time and retreat into the deep woods periodically. Some times I walk the edge of the woods alone and some times I walk it with others.

A creative life occurs both in the deep woods as there is an inner creative act that precedes any outward creative act and in the sunlight of the meadow where the creation is exposed to the often harsh mid-day sun.
Too much time in the meadow often triggers a defensive rather than creative response to life. Is it any wonder that sunlight provides needed vitamins, then the skin tans to a deeper color but beyond that the long term results are destruction of the skin and poisoning of the body. People and organizations that stake themselves in the meadow of attention often lose the sheen of health and become merely bleached bones of their former selves.
Whether hiding in the deep woods or staked in the meadow, choose to expend your energy and walk at the edge of the woods. Bring balance back to your life, not by taking on more but by shedding the imbalance. Return to the creative path and actively create again.

Vision - Leads to Awards and Recognition (Boston Globe)

Reissue: A year ago, I wrote about my vision to create a retreat center and my projects at Kripalu. I just wanted to share some of the recognition given to four years of thinking, selling, planning, managing and sweat that I did there.

My Project at Kripalu was just featured in an article in the Boston Globe entitled Kripalu Center Dorm Radiates Simple Sustainability.

The project was also recently awarded an AIA Housing Design Award for 2010 and my thanks go to Peter Rose and his team at Rose + Guggenheimer (now Peter Rose + Partners).
photo courtesy of Rose + Partners


You can also read about the analysis and financial justification required to build such a beautiful green project at Metamorphosis Management Group (white paper) -and- read about how I built the team that designed and built this project employing the principles of Engagement and Respect at my blog on business solutions.

Here's the story of where it all began.

In 1993 during a workshop on Empowering Leadership, I was working along with my clients on developing a personal vision. There for the first time, I wrote about creating a retreat center. I had never heard of Kripalu at the time. But in 1996, three years later a former colleague from International Paper, Belinda Bothwick became the first outsider to be hired as Executive Director of Kripalu and I eventually received a phone call asking for help.

I took on Kripalu as project, so that I could learn about retreat centers and stayed 3 years, becoming the COO. I left Kripalu for five years and then returned to work upon strategic planning and development of both the operating educational and service businesses and the infrastructure of both the facilities and the technology. Although I resigned my full time position in April of 2008, I stayed on part-time through May of 2009 to complete the large construction projects which I have been working on for four years. Like all personal visions that are successful, they look now in reality, as I have imagined them for years.

In 2007, we began construction by moving a road and the adjacent parking lots to accommodate the Annex building. Once the road was moved and site cleared, I asked the civil engineers to have the Annex's corners staked out on the ground. The surveyors marked and placed the stakes. I walked to the stake marking the northeast corner of the building. I moved over a few feet to stand on the spot where one day there would be a beautiful enclosed walkway and above it five stories of bedrooms. When I looked out toward the Stockbridge bowl (Lake Mahkeenac) the view was wrong from what I had visualized from the building plans. The building had existed in my minds eye for years before we built it. I asked the civil engineers to check the stakes and they found out that they were off by seven feet. Only seven feet, but seven feet which blocked the view with an existing building.

The Annex building is an exceptional green building using Integrated Design methodology. It employs a radiant heating and cooling system for both the building as a whole and individually for each guest room. Day-lighting systems are designed into the building to allow the low winter sun into the building and to block the high summer sun and heat gain. The hallways of the building are "venturi tubes" and will provide passive cooling without wind. All in All, the building as built uses 45% of the energy of typical new construction of this type and can accept geo-thermal in the future.

I have posted an end of construction slide show on slideshare.com as well as my presentation on this project at the Nation Council for Science and the Environment annual conference in Washington, DC. (NCSE 2010:The New Green Economy.)

Learning Skills: Counterfeit Thinking versus Critical Thinking

Back in the mid 1990s, I contributed regularly at an annual conference on the teaching of problem-solving and thinking skills with the moniker, Problem Solving Across the Curriculum (PSAC) that was the brainchild of a friend of mine Dr. Daniel K. Apple, the President of Pacific Crest. The concept of the conference, which attracted mostly educators along with a few business executives and consultants, was that there is a common set of learning skills required to solve problems that is applicable across and independent of the specific subject matter being taught.


At the time, I was heavily engaged in corporate consulting and training. We were teaching problem-solving under the umbrella of Total Quality Management and World Class Manufacturing methods, the precursor to today's Lean and Six Sigma methods for problem solving and process improvement.

At the third PSAC Conference, I was a panelist at the plenary session on the topic of thinking skills along with Dr. Donald Bishko and Dr. Gary A. Woditsch co-author of The Thoughtful Teacher's Guide to Teaching Thinking Skills.

One of the topics we grappled with was whether or not you could in fact teach thinking skills. Dr. Woditsch contended that with few exceptions, individuals were capable of further development of their thinking skills. He countered the premise of the question by pointing out that we have “always” been teaching thinking skills as a byproduct of teaching subject matter.

Furthermore, Dr. Woditsch offered that two things that confused the issue. They were the lack of assessment around the effectiveness of the development of thinking skills -and- the ability of individual learners to develop coping strategies in place of thinking skills to produce "counterfeit" results. For example, rather than actually learning a skill, one can simply memorize a pattern and as long as the circumstances do not change significantly the pattern would yield a similar result.

My son Will was developing these coping strategies in 1st grade when it came to math. His teacher handed out worksheets where you first did the math in a “box” and then based upon the answers, colored the “box” to produce a pattern. William simply, figured out the pattern and skipped nearly all the math, as evidenced by the high percentage of incorrect answers in his work that was colored flawlessly.

There are many examples of counterfeit thinking and its limitations. Have you ever worked for someone who was promoted to being a manager because they were the best at following orders or getting tasks done? They often make dismal managers because the underlying pattern for success has changed. Even successful managers and businesses fail when the pattern of the marketplace or regulatory environment changes.

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Counterfeit thinking, the attempt to follow patterns that worked in previous and similar situations, is exactly what Einstein is speaking of.

The episode of the Simpson’s where a lobbyist suggests to Mayor Quimby and the community leaders that all Springfield needs to cure its problems is a “Monorail”, mocks the counterfeit thinking so often employed by politicians in their “pork barrel” funding of projects that have zero possibility of producing the results promised but follow the pattern of similar projects done elsewhere.

To read more about Seattle's Monorail, Check out Transit Miracle or Urban Toy.


As opposed to “counterfeit” thinking, the term "critical thinking" takes thinking in a focused and diagnostic direction as it means "thinking" directed at finding and examining that which is fundamental to understanding something. Critical thinking is about finding patterns not following patterns. The leap from thinking about something -to- developing an understanding of something is the same as the difference between standing on a pool deck and looking at an object on the bottom -and- diving into the pool, swimming to the bottom and examining the object down there.

The primary tool in critical thinking is "asking questions". When you work at developing "content rich" questions about something, you must examine and inventory that which you already know or assume that you know. In working out which questions need to be asked you seek questions that when answered will further your understanding.

Counterfeit thinking will lead you to dead ends and cliff faces but critical thinking will open doors and minds.

Power to Destroy Always Greater than the Power to Create

While we spend much of our time attempting to create what matters most or build upon the things we have invested our love, time or money into; it is none-the-less important to remember that at any point in time, our ability to destroy exceeds our ability to create.


This power dynamic, unfortunately appears to be a universal truth. For any individual or group, the instantaneous capacity to destroy exceeds the instantaneous capacity to create.
It takes at least two people to build a relationship, yet only one to destroy it. Twenty years of good will can be undermined in an afternoon. It's kind of scary when you think about all the implications of this principle. Relationship building and the development of intimacy take time and trust, there really is no short-cut. Once one person in a relationship gives up, for whatever reason a long-term relationship is in deep danger. The power is now completely in the hands of the person willing to destroy the relationship not the person attempting to save it.
If you read the 9-11 Commission report, the most stunning thing is how a group of about 30 people spent two years and about $500,000 to put together and pull-off an event that took 3,000 lives, caused $10 Billion in direct damages, shattered our sense of security and unleashed a decade of war. Look at the imbalance of their effort to destroy and our efforts to restore what was lost.
I am not writing about this topic to depress your senses or call upon your destructive impulses but rather to highlight the challenge that creators face when they begin to make progress and have in-fact empowered themselves. When trying to create, you will face many roadblocks and negative feedback. Do not let impatience or frustration draw out your anger.
When you feel angry, regardless of cause, it is always best to carefully choose your response. You may need to take a breather by going for a run or walk to avoid reacting to the situation.
Anger at its best is a call to energize for self-defense but anger at its worst is reckless lashing out that usually inflicts far more damage to our creative efforts and relationships than it dies to our target.
In other articles where I examined developing a personal vision, the focal point of our creative efforts, it was important to note that creating a vision is choice with consequences. In fact, in order to create, you must accept all of the consequences of your choice.
Let's return to anger, the power to destroy and the creative empowered path.
When angry, it is important to revisit both the long-term results that are encompassed within your vision -and- to examine the values and beliefs which inform your spiritual path. When the impulse to destroy rears its ugly head, it is more important to take a stroll on your spiritual path than it is to force progress or undermine your vision.

Confidence or Arrogance: What to do with Feedback

A leader, inventor or artist must have a strong ego to persevere in the face of failures, mistakes and indifference. If you attempt to create what matters most you will receive feedback in many forms and sometimes the feedback will be in the deafening silence of apathy. When you are pushing forward, some will see your actions as confidence and others will see them as arrogance.


To ignore feedback is folly and yet to be weighted down by feedback is to disempower yourself and surely fail. There are several planes upon which critical examination of feedback is important among these are structural, values and financial.

Structural feedback is feedback focused upon whether your approach is naturally delivering the desired result. The focus here is not upon the opinions proffered but rather gaining understanding of what is working and to what degree is it working. To assess what is working, you need data whether it is observed or measured. Your own honest observations may, in fact, be the only available data early on and at points in your creative process.

When the developed parts of your intended creation exist primarily in your head, you need a thinking discipline to conduct experiments. These "thinking" or gedanken experiments were used by Einstein to test his theories. It was often decades before his could be tested with actual experiments due to both cost and technological capability. Both Eliyahu Goldratt in the book, Theory of Constraints and Gerald Nadler and Shozo Hibino in their book Breakthrough Thinking, have outlined approaches to conducting thinking experiments that are useful for both developing and testing solutions..

On the values plane, both your approach and the consequences must be examined in terms of your values. Here you must take in data that is direct and indirect as well as data which is immediate and data spaced over time. When you are creating, your ultimate success depends on the sum of all results including those which are unintended.

Many otherwise successful leaders and creators are undone by the long-term ripple of values flaws and their unintended consequences. Each creative idea has a window of opportunity for its fruition and this window narrows when value-based standards of behavior, methods and outcomes are lowered.

The final plane for examination at this time is the financial plane over which you are working. Given the rate at which the resources available to you are being consumed, how much time do you have to work with? Given the estimated cost of the next step or the next experiment, can you afford to take it? If not now, when?

Actions and experiments that are cost prohibitive may need to curtailed, modified or only conducted in your head.

Whether you are confident, will depend upon your ability to filter and handle input and then keep moving forward. Arrogance will need to be kept in check by honestly assessing the feedback and revisiting the values plane examination.

Materialism: Salt, Fat, Sugar and Limits

Human-beings naturally consume too much salt, sugar and fat when it is plentiful. Science tells us that these three items were both needed for survival -and- were generally scarce in the natural environment during most of human existence. Therefore, we are genetically designed to detect and enjoy the taste of foods containing salt, sugar or fat to help ensure that we seek and ingest at least the minimal quantities for survival.

The dominant feature of snack food is their content of sugar/salt/fat. Remember the Lay's Potato Chip add, "Bet you can't eat just one"? It is possibly the most truthful add slogan of all time. It is true that once, that salty chip hits your tongue, you do crave more.

What happens when we eat too much sugar, salt or fat? Data suggests that we increase our chances of diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and heart attacks if we consume too much of these items amongst other things. This provides good long term reasons not to overindulge in these items and yet our taste buds and cravings make limiting these items a hard thing to do.

Materialism is similar to salt, fat and sugar as a dominant driver in human behavior. If truth is, “what works in the world”, then materialism is partially true. Materialism run amok causes social, spiritual and well-being problems just as too much sugar or fat would cause a health problem.

The partial truth of materialism is similar to the eating of potato chips. The first bit of material wealth does meet our survival needs and provide some security. The next bit brings us some comfort. The bit after that brings us a little luxury and then a little more. After a while there is a disconnection between the desire to have more material wealth and the unintended consequences and limitations of material wealth.

Material wealth can be consumed, invested in the ownership of assets or given away to friends, family or others such as charitable organizations. The government will take its fair share of your material wealth as well. I am not opposed to the accumulation of material wealth. A common quote that is misquoted is "money is the root of all evil" when in fact the truer quote is, "the love of money is the root of all evil".

Materialism raises the accumulation of material wealth above all other things as it tends to assign value only according to direct financial measurements of income and assets. With the great support of advertising, personal attributes are associated with the possession of certain material goods. "Success" is defined by the car you drive, the town you live in or the clothes you wear without any consideration to your sense of happiness, peacefulness or self-fulfillment through creative expression.

The path to building a legacy is a three-fold path as first consideration is given to the focal point of your creative expression, “creating what matters most” and second consideration is given to, living a life that affirms your beliefs and values on a daily basis. These are never separated from but purposefully placed above the third essential ingredient which is earning enough money to support your efforts.