“BUBIA! BUBIA!” (Be Unreasonable. Be In Action.)

One Guy’s Phd: 17 Years of Pretty helpful Discoveries

No, I don’t have a formal PhD. (Barely earned my high-school diploma.) But flipping through my journals from the past 17 years, I noticed a lot of Pretty helpful Discoveries, many I was blind to when they first occurred. Divorce triggered my journey to learn new stuff about myself. And I picked up a lot by staying open to new experiences — from above, below, strange folk, cool shrinks, crafty demons, surreal events, ER visits and way more. So if you’re looking for some laughs & new life-learnings through can’t-make-that-shit-up stories, join me. Together, we’ll poke fun at our human journey while the universe has its way with us. Here’s Chapter 3…

There were about 100 of us. Strangers who dropped six hundred bucks each to gather in a below-ground, abandoned office space with the window-blinds drawn tight. We squirmed in cramped, rickety metal chairs, banking on Barry who was on stage now, to lead us to the lives we dreamed of living. Donning an all-black wardrobe to eliminate any other further distractions, he wasted no time going for the jugular.

“There’s a voice in our head,” Barry said in a deep, commanding tone. “It’s always on. It’s always talking. It’s ugly. It’s always distracting us from who we really are — if we allow it to. So stop. Right now. Get quiet. Listen. What’s it saying to you?”

Silence.

Barry was a pro. He glided over to the weakest floor plank on stage then gingerly leaned into it with just enough pressure to make it creek with agony. Just as he was doing with us.

“C’mon. Be honest with me. With yourself. Be brave. Who wants to share what they’re hearing right now. Real time. Unfiltered.”

Scary proposition. First you had to acknowledge you might have such an insidious voice — track back in your brain, into your soul, deep into your being to a place you’ve never been before. Then you had shut the fuck up. Listen to its merciless rant. Then have the balls to share all of that with a bunch of people who seemed OK but that you had basically just met.

“I’ll go,” said the hot brunette in the back row.

She looked like she may have actually been waiting out this drama for the perfect timing to make the most of her moment in the transformational spotlight. With a fling of her brown hair and a deep sigh to reclaim our attention as if she hadn’t already had it, she ran her hands down the front of her white blouse in self-consumed, sensual exasperation, then began.

“Sex. It’s all I think about.”

“Sex. Sex. Sex. Screw. Screw. Screw. That’s all I hear all the time. The voice in my head is telling me to get laid right now. It’s already picked out a few guys in this room to bang before we end today.”

“Well, thank you… thank you, Zola, is that right?” Barry responded with a cool calmness that helped take the room-temp down a few degrees.

“Yes, that’s right. I’m Zola. And I’m so glad you asked about the voice in my head. Bad things happen when I don’t listen to it, when I shove it down and just try to get on with my day.”

“Got it,” said the leader. “I really hear what you’re saying. And Zola — and everyone else — since it’s close to our first break, how about if we pause now and continue this discussion afterwards?”

Everyone was grateful for this temporary release and mumbled in the affirmative. “Good then. And Zola, let’s chat for moment at break, OK?”

“Yes, thank you. I’d like that.”

Most of us thought Barry would be the first dude to get laid by Zola that day but that wasn’t the case. After break, he started the next session calling out how unique, desperate and totally cray cray Zola’s feedback was for our workshop.

“We’re here to focus on personal transformation we have control over. For some, there are different realms that must first be explored with other professionals. That’s what I suggested to Zola. I refunded her money and asked her not to return.”

Some are eager to share their feelings. Others not so much.

Zola was gone. And we were confronted by Barry again. He had an agenda to complete and he was on it. “Time to get back on track people and get back to my question about that voice in our heads that’s always on, always talking. Who else wants to share what they’re hearing right now, as honestly as possible? Well maybe not Zola-honest.”

Barry got the laughs he needed. Permission to speak openly had been restored and a few hands nervously floated up. Folks probably thought the transparency-bar had been set so high that their own stories wouldn’t come close to what we just heard. They felt safe to share.

Me? I left the room.

A few minutes later, as if I had sleepwalked into the hallway, I found myself smugly sipping water from the fountain lauding praise on myself. “I didn’t need to be in the room because I, and only I, didn’t have a voice inside my head controlling my every thought.”

Cranking my Drone Zone mix through my comfy noise-cancelling headphones, I stepped out into the parking lot and warm sunshine, choosing to skip the entire segment. I gave myself a huge, proverbial pat on the back. Then returned to the room when I felt it was time to engage with the real stuff that could help me. So I thought.

I told myself I was in control. (I was a total prisoner.)

It took me years to get that I had actually walked out on my authentic self that day: I denied, suppressed and flat out ignored that I had a voice in my head telling me what to do. Instead of consciously listening to the self-sabotaging bullshit it was railing at me, I subconsciously empowered it by not listening to it and in the process, allowing it to control me. [DEEP SIGH.] I just remembered one of Barry’s quotes from Day 1.

“A man distracted is a man defeated.”

I went to Landmark Education to see if I could scrape off some tips to help me finally finish a kids’ book I had started with my daughter. It worked. (Read the details on my flights to Planet Fungeye to interview toenail fairies for my graphic novel in future posts.)

And Barry was good. He never let any of us off the hook when we manufactured excuses, reasons and stories to dodge our personal responsibility to live a life we love. Not only was he a ruthless coach, he also owned the stage with the perfect blend of John Candy and a 10th-grade math teacher who could convert the most complex quadratic equation into a simple, friendly concept with a mere sentence or two. When at his best, Barry sketched killer graphics on the blackboard to make his point.

Taking notes at any of the first Landmark sessions, however, was strictly prohibited: they want your eyes, mind and heart invested in your leader’s every word, every gesture. No scrawling your own peasant insights into your hotel notepad. I ignored that rule. Barry was spewing brilliant stuff I knew I could use my entire life. So why not, you know, jot down a few ideas lest I forget them?

I played dumb, pulled out my black Pentel and jammed my journal with tons of Barry-isms.

“There’s no figuring it out, there’s only creating it.”

That was one of my first notes. Which is pretty much all anyone needs to know. (Yes, I did think of packing up and walking out right then.) As humans who intuitively and existentially know the truth of that statement, we get stuck spending so much time tossing, turning and trying to figure things out so we can reach some perceived state of understanding that is actually bullshit yet lets us proclaim, “Totally! That’s it! I’ve figured out why my life’s a fuckin’ mess. Now I’m empowered to change.”

It’s a total trap, of course. Because once we think we have that level of enlightenment, we buy a few bottles of wine way beyond our budget, toast ourselves, then when things get warm and sloshy, we convince ourselves that we need to keep searching for even more meaning. You get it. It’s never enough. And on our deathbeds, if we’re lucky, we see that our life was spent chasing meaning rather than creating it.

I was a transformation junkie.

So many insights. So little change. I was pissed off at myself realizing how my desire to change didn’t match my action to change.

Which is when “Be Unreasonable. Be In Action” showed up in my journal. As Barry cranked out transformational gems, I tinkered with my new affirmation, shortening it to “BUBIA! BUBIA!” I still scream out that weird Balto-Slavic battle cry when I need to bust beyond the games my brain plays to seduce me into being reasonable, slow me down, avoid action and essentially prevent me from being who I really am in the moment.

Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? After sharing my new creation with the group, one of the Landmark staffers asked if he could name his boat “BUBIA! BUBIA!” I said sure. Just wanted a picture which I never saw. Wonder if he got landlocked trying to figure out his shit and never let that ship sail?

Are we there yet?

It took about a year and an investment of thousands to complete Landmark’s first curriculum, with lots of travel from Minneapolis where I live to Chicago where I did some of my workshops. Sure, I gleaned lots of awesome insights along the way but when you get that none of it really matters anyway, you lunge into action mode. Landmark sprung me in that direction.

Driving home after one of my Chicago workshops, I scrawled these thoughts into my journal laying on the passenger seat:

Confined to our steel-belted, hemi-heavin’, window-tinted, air-conditioned, leather-appointed, GPS-positive, meaning-making machines,

We press on the gas, pull out to pass,
With the nerve to ask: “Are we there yet?”

You kidding?
We haven’t even left yet.

And in that second,
We are free to embrace the velocity of now,

With each turn of the tire at 80 miles an hour.

I remember opening the windows to inhale the fresh possibilities abundantly offered by the rolling, green farmland on I-94 somewhere between Black River Falls and Osseo, WI.

“BUBIA! BUBIA!”

I was finally ready to finish my graphic novel.

But first, I decided it was time to visit our 100-ish Lithuanian relatives we’d never met. Myself and my daughters, 8, 6 and 4 at the time, were off to Vilnius for much Spurgos and for me, many Švyturys!

Follow me now.

Many more stories to come from me, but what I’m really excited about is reading your stories awakened by mine.