Month November 2016

On being an introvert

Geir Isene 6 Comments

I do talks and speeches to large audiences. I jump up and down, gesticulate and enthusiastically deliver messages on stage. I coach lots of people – from athletes, artists, executives and people off the street. People see me as a highly extrovert personality who loves being in the spotlight and love talking to lots of people.

When Anette got me to answer 20 questions designed to determine if a person is an extrovert or an introvert, I ended up scoring 85% introvert. And it fits perfectly. I am an introvert.

I love being in my own company, doing my own things without interference or external chatter, noise or direction. I love it to bits. Writing books or articles, programming, creating music or digital art, poetry, drawings, stargazing with my telescope or tinkering with my calculator collection. This gives me energy.

introvert

While I also love doing stuff on stage and coach people, it takes energy. But I do love that I get exhausted. Thing is – the things that gives energy is my introverted activities. The stuff that cost me energy is my extroverted activities. I still love doing them, but I need my introverted activities to keep me from burning out. It’s just how it is, really. And I like the mix.

I do not fit in the classical introvert category of thinking a lot, planning carefully, keeping a personal distance to others, etc. I’m an impulsive, anarchistic introvert who don’t mind people getting deep under my skin. Bah, the further I try to pin it down, the harder it becomes – almost like Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Maybe trying pin people down by labelling is both an unhealthy and futile activity. I believe people should remain fluid – much like Bruce Lee once said, “Be water, my friend”.

Trump for President!

Geir Isene 77 Comments

After several weeks of trying to raise awareness of the disaster it would be to elect Donald Trump as the president of the USA, I have changed my mind.

I will now support Trump and cheer on him from abroad – hoping he will hit a Home Run next week.

trump

I will support him precisely because it will be a disaster. It will set the effort to curtail global warming back decades when he pulls the US support for the Paris Agreement. Trump is notoriously anti-science and pro-conspiracies and conveniently believes climate change to be a hoax. I believe global warming is the single most important issue facing the Earth for the next century. And we cannot fail in our efforts to not fuck up our planet.

But, it’s better to fail hard and fast than to fail in ten years when the crisis is even tougher. And I don’t believe we can afford not to fail now. We must let Trump win so that he can fail in public so that the US can learn fast – and then join in with other nations that want to pull our weight together. The alternative is worse – having 150 million disaffected Americans sulking and bitching for the next 4 years.

Shielding the US from Muslims, Mexicans, Syrian refugees (which is largely due to the US intervention in the Middle East), free trade and everything Mr. Trump doesn’t like is certainly not the way forward. But no amount of rhetoric, persuasion or facts will convince Trump supporters that we need to pull together. The egoism runs too deep. He needs to wreck havoc in order for people to understand that this right wing lunacy is a dead end.

I believe in failing. And learning. It’s core to my coaching of athletes, executives and artists. US needs to learn. Since the world has never been socially better off than now, we should afford 4 years of crazy shit to accommodate for better decades to come.

It apparently wasn’t enough for Bush to fail, he’s simply been written off later as “part of the establishment”. We need another fast and solid failure.

Vote for Trump. Make America Fail Again.