Escape Adulthood

Live with Less Stress & More Fun

You & Improved

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No Joke: The Life-Changing Lesson I Learned From Joker

So I saw Joker. Normally, I avoid sad movies that I know will have sad endings. (I still haven’t seen Schindler’s List or any 9-11 movies for this reason.) I don’t want to spoil anything, but I think it’s fairly obvious that the titular character doesn’t opt for a career spreading joy and goodwill entertaining children at birthday parties. Still, I do love a good backstory and was drawn in by the superhero movie vibe. Of course, Joker is no superhero movie and is not suitable for children. It is disturbing and intense. I have also come to see it as beautifully-crafted documentary on the mental health crisis, brilliantly disguised as a mainstream movie about the origins of a pop culture supervillan.  My hope is that the hype and success of this movie will start new dialogues around the mental health issues that have bubbled up in our country. Between the increase of mass shootings in schools and public places, to the homelessness epidemic invading our large cities, something …

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Did You Notice the Rainbow Today?

I had the good fortune of getting invited to speak at a big conference in Hawaii, and the even better fortune of being able to bring along my family. The event was in Honolulu, and we were booked in a hotel on Waikiki Beach. Three minutes after checking in, we walked out onto our balcony and were treated to THIS view. (This is not a postcard, and I did not airbrush the rainbow in!) Trust me, in a speaking career that has spanned fifteen years, and after many, many views of ugly, rusty air conditioning units, this is NOT the norm.  We had spent a week in Oahu at this point, and this was already our third rainbow sighting. The next day, on our walk to dinner downtown, we saw another one. As we stopped to savor the free gift, I noticed we were in the minority. None of the obvious locals seemed to care. I haughtily climbed upon my majestic high horse, scoffing at the cynical people who were missing out on something pretty special. How jaded! How ungrateful! How …

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Why You Should Only Make Decisions While Wearing 3D Glasses

“3D Panda” by Jason Kotecki. 40″ x 40″. Oil on canvas.Original is SOLD. Prints available here. Too often, we look at our plans and big dreams with rose-colored glasses. We only see the upside, the pros, the best case scenarios. But if our dream – whatever it is – actually comes true, there will be downsides as well. As author and entrepreneur Mark Manson has pointed out, everything sucks, some of the time. Every dream – no matter how wonderful or glamorous it first appears  – comes with some flavor of what he calls a shit sandwich, a lousy side effect that you have to deal with.That’s not to say we shouldn’t dream. We just need to do it with 3D glasses. When we look at something with 3D glasses, we see it from all sides: the good, sexy, photogenic slide, and the ugly, unfavorable, hideously-lit side. This allows us to behold  a more realistic appraisal of the situation. In the early days of our business, I dreamed of creating a giant online retail store that …

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How to Tell When Your Dream is Not Really Your Dream

“Angry Eagle” by Jason Kotecki. 16″ x 20″. Oil on canvas.Original is SOLD. Prints available here. I spent nearly seven years writing and drawing a comic strip that wasn’t successful. Well, that’s not entirely true. People enjoyed it. It had fans. And it made a little bit of money. But it never got syndicated and didn’t generate a big enough audience or enough revenue to earn a living. And so I had to stop. It was probably the hardest thing I ever had to do, especially after pouring so much time, energy and money into that endeavor. Seven years of developing the discipline to sit down and write, even on days when no ideas come. Seven years spent drawing comic strips in a humid apartment with no air conditioning. Seven years learning the basics of business, of profit margins and net income and balance sheets. Seven years of sinking deeper into debt as we tried one idea after another in the quest to make a profit. It was a hard dream to let go of. I was …

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Giving Up Is Easy. Staying Focused is Hard

“Angry Owl” by Jason Kotecki. 16″ x 20″. Oil on canvas.Original is SOLD. Prints available here. I’ve always thought owls looked angry. That perception inspired this painting, as I decided to give him something to be angry about. But now I wonder if maybe they’re just focused. After all, perpetually being on the lookout for your next meal kind of requires your undivided attention. Likewise, in order to achieve a dream or accomplish anything worthwhile, you have to be incredibly focused. You can’t let distractions knock you off your game. One of the biggest reasons people are not as successful as they’d like to be – regardless of their definition of success – is due to a lack of focus. They keep chasing shiny objects and fail to follow through on any one initiative. As Steven Pressfield writes brilliantly in his book The War of Art, “The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.” Understanding …

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How an Improv Rule Can Improve Your Life

My brother used to be in an improv group, participating in a series of unscripted games for the entertainment of an audience. He was pretty good. The ones who weren’t seem to have the same thing in common. It wasn’t a lack of talent or that they were missing a funny bone. It was their refusal to adhere to the “yes, and…" rule. It’s the difference between success and failure in an improv skit. If a fellow performer suggests that your shoes are made of marshmallows, and you say, “No they aren't. What are you talking about? These are normal shoes,” the skit dies a hard, painful, and unfunny death. Instead, you need to accept the premise, and add to it. "YES, my shoes are made of marshmallows, AND they enable me to jump over cars!” What is vital to the success of an improv skit is also the key to a successful business or a happier, more fulfilling life. It’s possible to become more resilient while positively responding to challenges with grace and effectiveness, and we …

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The Life-Changing Wisdom a Cheetah Knows That You Don’t

“Speed Racer” by Jason Kotecki. 30″ x 40″. Oil on canvas.Original is SOLD. Prints available here. The cheetah is known for being fast.Really fast.It's the fastest land mammal, achieving running speeds of up to 70 miles per hour. But what most people don't know is that the cheetah can’t maintain those speeds for long. In fact, a cheetah spends very little of its time running. It needs to recuperate and build up energy for the next hunt.Obviously, if a cheetah doesn’t run, it cannot eat. But if the cheetah doesn’t rest, it cannot run. If the cheetah spent all its time doing what it does best, it would die. The rest is just as important as the chase. How much there is to learn from the cheetah! Oh, we have the running part down. We’re good at racing from one commitment to the next. Meetings, grocery shopping, clarinet practice, yoga, daycare drop-offs and pick-ups, baseball tournaments, birthday parties...the list goes on. But the resting part, that’s where we …

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Are You Near-Sighted or Far-Sighted?

I got my first pair of glasses in eighth grade. “Oh great,” I remember thinking, “Now I’m going to be one of those people.” I figured the least I could do was select a style that would be cool. For some reason, I thought big, brown frames with lenses the size of dinnerplates fit the bill. Since then, I’ve gone through quite a few frames, including the horrible clear plastic cheapos that were the best I could find in an emergency late-night mall trip. I busted lots of frames early on. At the time, I blamed my aggressive, living- on-the-edge lifestyle, but it probably had more to do with the awkwardness of puberty (good times). In a cruel twist of fate, the nasty clear plastic ones lasted the longest (good riddance, sophomore year). I even went through a contact lens phase before ultimately deciding that glasses were easier and I got comfortable with the idea of being “one of those people.” One thing that hasn’t changed is that I’m still near-sighted. …

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What’s Your Must Be Nice?

It’s a natural human tendency to compare ourselves to others, especially to people who are in the same field we’re in. Comparison isn’t necessarily a bad thing if it leads us to discover areas where we can improve. But when it shifts into envy or jealousy, that’s a problem.  I often attend the annual convention for the National Speakers Association. I always have to brace myself for the “must be nice” game. In the speaker world, it goes like this:  Of course he gets booked all the time, he’s a former NBA player. Must be nice.  She’s got so many connections from working all those years in the corporate world. Must be nice.  I wish I could juggle fire and do backflips like that. Must be nice.  I spend so much time noticing all the things I’m not that I miss the things I am. One theme that drove itself home for me during a convention years ago was my talent as an artist. It’s something I’m good at, and it’s a skill that very few speakers possess. And yet …

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Keep Casting

You can spend all day fishing and catch nothing: 2,375 casts; 2,375 failures.  But.  The next cast could be the one that changes everything.  Since I started my company in 1999, I’ve encountered many dead ends. We’ve had a lot of projects we were excited about, initiatives we were certain would deliver the breakthrough beyond our wildest dreams, that failed—hard.  We’ve lost money, time, and pride. Sometimes, it’s taken a long time to recover. After you’ve been hit by a car so many times, you start to wonder if maybe you should stop standing in the middle of the highway. But one thing that kept me going was a quote by Thomas Edison, who said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”  I guess I was more afraid of being a failure than I was of failing. And there’s a difference.  Dead ends happen. But hitting one doesn’t necessarily mean you’re dead or at the …

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