The Life-Changing Power of Doing Difficult Things

If you want to get anywhere in life, you have to get out of your comfort zone.  A mediocre life is one where you never venture off the path of least resistance.  In the past few years of my life, I have embraced this wisdom and it is beginning to pay dividends.  I used to have a fear of public speaking, for example.  I dove headlong into this fear, putting myself in situations where I was forced to speak in public, and my fear of it has dissipated.  There have been a few avenues for this.  I was taking courses at school to upgrade my education.  These courses often required participation in seminars and lectures.  In my early adulthood, I was gripped by a mortal fear to make any kind of contribution in these types of settings.  What if I said something stupid?  What if my voice cracked?  What if people noticed how nervous I was?  This last one was interesting and convoluted:  I was nervous for people noticing my nervousness.  The solution?  Feel the fear and do it anyway.  My participation level increased gradually as I took more courses.  Eventually, the fear and nervousness disappeared and I could freely contribute to any discussion with valid input.  My confidence soared.  I become self-aware and aware of my own level of intelligence.  Consequently my marks shot up.  Where I used to be a C and B student, I was suddenly a straight A scholar.  Also, my professors came to know me and I gained a good reputation, ensuring the possibility of reference letters if I were ever to apply to grad school.  

Another way I overcame fear of public speaking was by joining Toastmasters.  Toastmasters is a public speaking club whose mission is to “provide a supportive and positive learning environment, empowering members to develop leadership and communication skills resulting in greater self confidence and personal growth.”  I have done many speeches since joining two years ago and taken on many rolls requiring speaking before the group.  This wasn’t easy at first, as you can imagine.  By confronting my hesitance to speak in public and tackling it head-on, my anxiety magically began to disappear.  I came to love the chance to get before an audience, inspire them, and motivate them with my words of wisdom and the unique point of view that we all possess.

David Goggins is an ex-Navy Seal who talks a lot about the value of suffering and how it  promotes growth and excellence.  He has run many ultra-marathons, been through Hell Week in Navy Seal training three times, and set world records in endurance feats.  He says that on other side of suffering is greatness.  I thoroughly believe that.  Doing difficult things can catapult you into the stratosphere of excellence and mastery. 

Do something difficult each and every day, something you’re afraid of.  It could be doing an intense workout, asking someone out for a date, writing a thousand words, or asking for a raise at work.  Wayne Gretzky once said, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  Take risks, sail out on the seas of self-discovery and lose sight of the shore. 

Doing difficult things ensures growth.  When we lift a heavy weight, for example, the muscle fibers break down and rebuild themselves, thus getting bigger and stronger.  A bone that fractures will be stronger at the point at which it has broken after it heals.  Often, it is the people who have been through the most difficulty who are the strongest, whether the hardship has been abuse, disease, or some other form of trauma or temporary defeat.   Some people cower and retreat in the face of difficulty, resigning to a life of mediocrity.  The point however, is to persevere and come back, over and over and over again.  By being tenacious and never giving up, you are ensured victory and success. 

Don’t accept your limitations either.  In fact, your weaknesses are a gift.  They demonstrate for you where you can become strong and empowered.  My shyness, for example, was a sign that I could become a gifted communicator.  Often, our setbacks and weaknesses are signs that we are meant to grow past them and teach others how to overcome them, thus empowering them and enriching their lives.  This requires soul-searching and introspection.  You have to be self-aware and know what areas of your life can be improved.  By identifying these weaknesses, you have found the path to freedom.   It won’t be easy however.  Discipline is required.  This is what doing hard things is all about.  It may require rising at the crack of dawn, ending an addiction, or losing weight.  Jocko Willink another ex-Navy Seal has a book entitled “Discipline Equals Freedom” that I highly recommend.  The title says it all:  by doing difficult things and embracing discipline in our lives, we welcome freedom and well-being into our existence.  So “embrace the suck” and take action.

How Toastmasters Transformed My Life

In February of 2017, I became a member of Garden City Toastmasters.  Since joining and committing myself to going regularly, my life has been transformed beyond imagination.  I had been a long-time sufferer of social anxiety, especially around public speaking.  Toastmasters, I learned from various web searches, is a place for people like me.  I could meet people, practice public speaking, take on roles in the meetings, and improve myself in a variety of ways.  Now, more than two years later I can honestly say I am a new person.

My choice to become a member of Toastmasters coincided with a number of other positive habits that I incorporated into my life over the past few years.  I have practiced meditation, journaled daily, begun an exercise regimen, and read a lot of self-help and personal development material.  I attribute Toastmasters as a keystone habit that has been an important part of integrating all these other transformative practices into my life. 

I remember my first meeting like it was yesterday.  I nervously introduced myself in the guest introduction part of the meeting and hesitantly took part in Table Topics, a portion of the meeting where members and guests are asked to give a short, impromptu speech on a designated topic or question.  Surprisingly I was voted Best Table Topics Speaker at the end of the meeting, which really encouraged me to keep attending.  The other members of the club were so welcoming and friendly.  I recall seeing the happy look on other members faces as I agreed to take part in Table Topics. 

At our weekly meetings of Toastmasters, there is a set schedule which is regularly adhered to and seldom is wavered from.  There is an introduction from the Sergeant-at-Arms who reads the Mission Statement of the club followed by the Toastmaster who introduces the theme of the meeting and welcomes any guests.  There is a Word-of-the-day and a humourist who tells a humourous story or anecdote to inject some energy into the meeting.  Table Topics usually occurs in the first half as well.  After a brief break, the prepared speeches part of the meeting occurs followed by evaluations by individual members. 

My first speech was an awkward affair in which my eyes were mostly glued to the notes I had.  As I did more and more speeches, I learned to gradually become comfortable without notes and using more gestures and movement.  I have really developed myself from doing about 20 speeches over the past 2 years and I still have a long way to go.  I have learned a lot from the evaluations of my speeches and incorporated the feedback to improve my delivery and content as I made my way through various projects and assignments. 

Communication is one of the most important skills an individual can possess, whether in a career or life in general.  My life has changed in profound ways because of my experience with Toastmasters.  Since joining two years ago, I have landed a job that I love and always wanted and I attribute my Toastmasters experience to helping me get the job and nailing the interview.  Having a “Competent Communicator” designation, which I earned for completing 10 speeches from a manual, can look great on a resume and I’m sure my current employer was impressed with this credential.  I’ve also noticed that my communication skills in day-to-day life has become more effortless and efficient.   Meditation may have played a role in this, but I’m certain that Toastmasters and all the communicating I have done has helped immensely.

When I first joined, I have to admit, the experience was somewhat uncomfortable and I wasn’t fully committed.  I failed to attend some meetings after saying I would be there.  There were also moments of failure, embarrassment and awkwardness.  This is the point and the only way to grow, as is the case with anything worthwhile in life.  It is said that Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times before he came up with the lightbulb, after all.  You can choose to play it safe in life, sitting at home and never venturing past your familiar experience, or you can do something like join Toastmasters and commit to it where you will learn valuable leadership and communication skills. 

I am now the Sergeant-at-Arms of Garden City Toastmasters and have the privilege of being able to speak at each and every meeting in some capacity.  I now welcome public speaking, embrace it, and look forward to it, whereas in the past I would fear it and avoid it at all costs.  So if you want to improve yourself in any way, do as I did and join your local Toastmasters club.  You will see results after a few short months and may not even recognize yourself a year later with all the confidence you will gain.

Spike Lee's Latest Joint, BlacKKKlansman

The true story of a black police detective who infiltrated the KKK, Spike Lee’s latest joint has a
momentum that slowly, propulsively builds.  There is a visceral tension throughout as Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) uses the sheer force of his intellect and cunning to undermine the possibility of a race war.

Interestingly, it is the use of his voice via telephone conversations that Stallworth does most of his covert operating.  His real-life stand-in is Adam Driver’s Flip Zimmerman, who lunges headlong into the danger zone of Klan meetings and proposed cross-burnings.  Zimmerman’s Jewish heritage is also a bone of contention and has to be constantly suppressed and denied in the presence of Klansmen Jew-haters.

I was expecting Stallworth to be more involved besides over the phone.  The poster for the film depicts him donning a Klan hood and I was wanting that to happen.  However, the story allows for a real life encounter when Stallworth is assigned as a security officer for Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace).  Here, Lee’s use of tension is masterful.

The period detail is great, the acting is formidable.  There is a compelling coda that acts as a reminder that the racially-divided times of the early 70’s echoes in the era of the Trump presidency.  We’ve had a black president since the time the film depicts, but with the preponderance of police brutality and injustice at the hands of young black individuals, how far have we really come?  BlacKKKlansmen iterates the fact that we have quite a ways to go.

Fargo, Season 2: Delving deeper into the darkness

To surpass the first season of Fargo in terms of quality would be difficult.  It was phenomenal.
However, season 2 continues in the tradition of brilliance.

Taking place in 1979 this time (season 1 was in 2006), the show has a chance to dazzle in the area of period detail.  It doesn’t fail there.  Unlike most shows that continue in chronology, Fargo zips back 27 years, but there is a connection to the first season.  Characters from the first season reappear here under the guise of different actors.   Lou Solverson, played in the first season by Keith Carradine as an elderly, diner-owning father of grown-up Deputy Molly, is here played as a young Minnesota State Trooper by Patrick Wilson.

Once again, we deal in this season with murder and depravity.  There is a multiple homicide in a Waffle Diner and the assailant is run-over by a distracted driver, hair dresser Peggy Blumquist (Kirsten Dunst).  She arrives home with the victim still on her windshield, suspecting he is dead.  He isn’t, and when her husband, butcher Ed (Jesse Plemons) arrives home, he resorts to finishing what his wife inadvertently started by killing him in a moment of desperation and confusion.

All these events are only the beginning.  The victim of the Blumquists is Rye Gerhardt (Kieran Culkin) of a local crime family.  Revenge is sought, more violent acts follow, an investigation is launched by authorities, and there is a UFO.

I don’t mean to downplay the impact and intensity of the second season of Fargo by my brief, curt description of it.  It, like the preceding season, is engaging and suspenseful.  It contains some truly memorable and funny characters.  It contains the same sly sense of humour as both the first season and the film on which it is based.

Like the first season’s Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton), there is one character that really stands out as truly sinister and seemingly invincible.    That is Hanzee Dent (Zahn McClarnon), a Native American loyal to the Gerhardt family with a mysterious, silent aura, who along with a host of other characters, racks up an extensive body count.  He is my personal favourite character from this season.  He is deadly and vicious, but by the season’s end, he has grown on the viewer and is strangely sympathetic. That is the strength and wonder of the series:  the ability to develop characters that are at once repellent and admirable.

There are some interesting visual motifs that set this season apart from the first as well.  There is an extensive use of split screen imagery, which offers a unique stylistic appeal to this season.  It is a technique used, not gratuitously, but to give the viewer increased knowledge and perspective.

The Minnesota locale is once again used effectively as the setting.  The frigid, desolate and snow-drifted exteriors lend a sense of isolation and lack of empathy towards its inhabitants.  This season is gorgeously shot, as well.

There is a heart-felt, familial passion at the centre of this season.  Lou Solverson and family (wife and daughter) are frequently depicted in their home life.  They are dealing with the cancer of Betsy (Cristin Milioti), which will eventually leave young daughter, Molly motherless.  Ted Danson plays Betsy’s father, Sheriff Hank Larsson.  His character offers a central pillar around which Lou and his young family can stand in his frequent visits and presence in the Solverson household.

Overall, Season 2 of Fargo is a gem.  It maintains the tall stature established by the first season and develops the series in an interesting and welcome direction.  Can the series maintain its wit, surprise and intelligence in upcoming seasons?  Only time will tell.

Fargo, Season 1: An enthralling spin-off

Netflix Canada recently released the first two seasons of Fargo, the television series based on the 1996 Coen Brothers film.  I’d like to write about the first season now.  

First of all, the spirit of the original film is here:  the intrigue, the suspense, the droll, dark humour.  I will further proclaim that this series happens to be one of the greatest television series of all time.  It contains unforgettable characters, spellbinding turns of events, and intricate, tightly written dialogue and plot twists. 

Like the original film, the first season proclaims that these are “true events,” but as we now know, that’s just a cunning deception of the film and it’s spin-off.  The first season takes place in 2006.  An ominous drifter has arrived in Bimidji, Minnesota.  He is played by Billy Bob Thornton in one of the most sinister, scary performances to ever grace the small screen.  His Lorne Malvo is a highly original character and is utterly horrific in his violent actions throughout the first season.  He almost seems super-human or extra-terrestrial in his ability to think, plan and execute.  The character recalls other Coen brothers’ villains, most notably Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men, an almost other-worldly individual in his omnipresence and chilling lack of humanity. 

When Malvo meets Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) a local insurance salesman, he learns of Nygaard’s disdain for a local bully and decides to take on the responsibility of rubbing him out, despite Nygaard’s lack of consent.   This leads to a series of violent crimes and murders that will baffle and bewilder local law enforcement officers, including Deputy Molly Solverson (Allison Tollman) and officer Gus Grimly (Colin Hanks). 

Freeman’s performances of Nygaard recalls Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) from the original Fargo film.  Freeman seems to be doing an impersonation of the original character, but he adds his own riffs and spins on him.  He has the same meek, passive temperament, but he also has a darker side than Jerry and ultimately reveals himself to be a man who will go to any lengths to put himself ahead, including lying, and acts of adultery and violence.  

Fargo is a black comedy like the film on which it is based.  It’s humour is constantly mixed with suspense and terror.  This aspect of the show is where it really shines:  it takes you on a roller-coaster ride of emotions and reactions.  The violence, when it does occur is graphic and sudden, and there is a lot of it.  A lot of innocent people are mowed down.  

I am almost through the second season and will write on it too.  As I said, this is one of the great television series.  It constantly surprises, amuses, and leaves you riveted to the small screen.  It captures the soul and spirit of the original film and moves it in new directions and unexpected angles.  

Netflix's Ozark, Season 1: Dark, Surprising and Suspenseful

If you have some spare time in your days or evenings and are looking for a series to watch on Netflix, I would suggest a new one, Ozark.  

The Ozark of the title is the Ozark of Missouri in a resort community where the main protagonist family, The Byrdes, moves.  They move from a suburb of Chicago in an attempt to evade the threatening reach of a dangerous Mexican drug lord for whom the patriarch of the family, financial advisor Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman), was laundering money. 

The threat, however, follows them and the family, consisting of father, Marty, wife, Wendy (Laura Linney) and two children, Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz) and Jonah (Skylar Gaertner), are constantly on the precipice of omnipresent danger and suspense. 

Marty must somehow pay a debt to the drug-lord and he starts to initiate new money-laundering schemes to appease the man in question. 

There are some great characters in Ozark.  Besides the Byrdes, there is the Langmore family, a trailer-living bunch of rednecks including young teen, Ruth Langmore (Julia Garner), a fierce, independent-minded young woman who steals the show at times and is a great character to watch.

There is the constant breath of the FBI down Marty’s neck, as he attempts to launder money secretly and in whatever way he can muster.  An FBI agent, Roy Petty, played by Jason Butler Harner, happens to be gay.  His obsessive surveillance of the Byrde family is juxtaposed with the relationship he initiates with an older member of the Langmore family.  It is a source of surprise in a series of many surprises in this first season.

And this is a riveting first season.  As mentioned, it constantly surprises you.  The way the elder Byrdes reveal their secrets to the children comes unexpectedly for what you are use to within the dynamics of typical parent-child relations.  Ruth Langmore takes on the management of a local strip joint in a way that provokes admiration and surprise as well.

Bateman's performance is another surprise.  Typically playing comical roles in the past, he achieves something spectacular in this first season:  a mix of unwavering, momentous determinism with a fractured, damaged credulity.   

At the season’s end, you are left with questions as to what will happen next.  This is the purpose of any great series’ cliffhanging, but Ozarks achieves it on a masterful level.  Some characters don’t survive, others see a glimmer of hope in their horizon.  Regardless of who your like or dislike, what is certain is that you will return for the next season of Netflix’s Ozark. 

The Simmering Florida Heat of "Bloodline" (Season 3) [Spoilers]

Netflix’s “Bloodline” has returned for a third and final season, and like the two previous seasons it simmers with the hot, Florida Keys temperature, boiling over with intrigue, duplicity and a noirish delving into the depths of humanity’s despair. 

The Rayburns are a family dealing with a lot of skeletons in their closet.  The influence of Danny Rayburn’s (Ben Mendelsohn) actions in the past as well as those of brothers John (Kyle Chandler), Kevin (Norbert Leo Butz), sister Meg (Linda Cardellini), and mother Sally (Sissy Spacek), are constantly being felt, adding an undeniable heaviness and moroseness to every present day situation.   

Danny isn’t present much in this most recent season (he’s dead), but his spectre hangs over everything and he occasionally appears as figments of certain characters’s imaginations and remembrances. 

John Rayburn is the established centre-piece and heart of the Rayburn family.  His murder of Danny weighs on his soul constantly and threatens to pull him under the riptide of lies and guilt.  Kevin, at the end of the second season, had brutally murdered Marco Diaz (Enrique Murciano), Meg’s boyfriend, but Kevin’s problems with drugs, alcohol, organized crime and self-delusion demonstrate that he doesn’t bear as much guilt for the consequences of his enormous transgressions.  This makes him an extremely unsympathetic character although the series does demonstrate sympathy for him in the development of his tenuous sobriety and the birth of a son. 

What I like about “Bloodline” in this third season is the way it continues to makes the Florida heat palpable.  The climate seems to be a character itself, threatening to engulf the characters’ grips on sanity.  Similarly, the Rayburn hotel is threatened by the rising waters of the Florida Keys coast.  Sally, by the season’s end, is hurriedly trying to sell the hotel to anyone who is sucker enough to purchase a piece of property that will, in ten years time, be submerged in water. 

The water in this series is a highly symbolic motif. It is a place where one of the Rayburn children (a girl) died at a young age from drowning.  It is a place where John nearly drowns himself in a later episode.  The water seems to represent an unknowable force of nature that not only threatens to engulf the Rayburn’s livelihood, but is also the only definite, constant thing in their lives, a place where death is palpable and tangible.  It is a locale where much of the actions of the past that haunt the present and future seem to be focused and meet. 

You are constantly wondering through this third season just how each member of the family will get out of the deep mire of shit that they find themselves in.  In the end, certain members evade a cruel fate while others become engrossed in the consequences of their past actions.  No clear cut resolution is offered in the last episode.  You are left with the proposal that John may be able to atone for his past sins via the confession to Danny’s son, Nolan (Owen Teague), of his involvement of the murder of his father, but the answer is not clear and the viewer is left hanging.  

Thanks to some great acting and interesting dynamics between characters and environment, the third and final season of “Bloodline” is a riveting, neo-noir paen to the twisted, dysfunctional and bruised psyche that characterizes a certain, but at the same time, universal family of the early 21st century.