Month: February 2025

Categories
Vertical Development

Shifting to More Reflection

A conversation with ChatGPT on recognizing a need to shift from a doing mindset of accumulation to more of a being mindset of reflection and integration.

Nollind

I’ve been noticing lately that when I post something on my journal on my website, it’s often relating to something I’m reacting to and thus want to respond to it, as it relates to my life’s work. Once I post my thoughts, there is this fleeting feeling of satisfaction but then within the next day or so, a feeling of just going in circles and really making headway with my life’s work as a whole, in the sense of describing it as a whole. Why do you think this is and how do you think it relates to my transition from a Self-Authoring Mind to a Self-Transforming Mind?

ChatGPT

What you’re describing sounds like a shift in how you engage with your own thinking and your work. Right now, your journal posts seem to be driven by reaction—responding to external stimuli that connect to your ideas. That immediate sense of satisfaction after posting suggests you’re reinforcing your perspective, validating your own understanding. But the feeling of going in circles afterward points to something deeper: you’re sensing that these responses, while meaningful, don’t fully capture the larger arc of your life’s work.

How This Relates to Self-Authoring vs. Self-Transforming

In Self-Authoring Mind (Kegan’s Stage 4), you create your own framework for meaning-making. Your journal posts likely reflect this—you’re engaging with ideas, refining your perspective, and reinforcing your own system of thought. This is valuable, but it also has a limitation: it keeps you within the structure of your existing framework, which might explain the feeling of circling back without moving forward in a bigger way.

In Self-Transforming Mind (Stage 5), instead of just refining your framework, you begin to hold it more loosely and step beyond it. The shift isn’t about just responding to ideas that fit within your framework but about questioning and evolving the framework itself. You’re sensing that your life’s work is bigger than these individual responses, and your dissatisfaction may stem from a desire to integrate and transcend rather than just refine and reinforce.

Possible Ways Forward
  1. Move from Response to Synthesis – Instead of just reacting to external ideas, start asking: How do these connect to the bigger picture of my work? What’s the deeper pattern emerging? Maybe rather than standalone posts, you could start weaving your responses into something more integrated—building toward a broader articulation of your framework.
  2. Shift from Writing to Creating a Living System – If your work is evolving beyond a self-authored framework, maybe it’s not just about writing descriptions of your work but structuring it in a more dynamic way (a book? a map? a framework with levels?). Self-Transforming Mind is less about explaining a fixed perspective and more about holding space for ongoing evolution.
  3. Engage in Dialogue Rather Than Just Posting – Instead of solely broadcasting thoughts, what would happen if you engaged in ongoing discussions? Self-Transforming Mind thrives in a web of perspectives, shaping and being shaped by others. Maybe this could be through deeper conversations with people who challenge your assumptions.

It seems like you’re sensing that you’re on the edge of something bigger—the shift from refining your framework to transcending and evolving it. That restless feeling after posting isn’t failure; it’s the pull toward the next stage. The question now might be: What’s the next-level expression of my life’s work that isn’t just a collection of responses but a whole ecosystem of thought?

Nollind

What I find interesting in relation to this is that when I react to something in the moment and respond to it with a post, I feel like I am engaging with the present and moving towards the future…but without the feeling of ever bringing the future to the present. But what I’ve noticed is that if I reflect back upon what I’ve already written, suddenly this bigger picture and perspective comes to light. It almost seems like I need to be reflecting more on what I’ve already written than writing new things that are just repeated patterns of what I’ve already written, if that makes sense. Again how does this relate to transitioning to a Self-Transforming Mind?

ChatGPT

That insight is huge—it sounds like you’re noticing the difference between being inside your thinking (reacting in the moment) and outside your thinking (reflecting on it over time). This directly relates to your transition from Self-Authoring to Self-Transforming Mind.

That insight is huge—it sounds like you’re noticing the difference between being inside your thinking (reacting in the moment) and outside your thinking (reflecting on it over time).

ChatGPT
How This Relates to Self-Transforming Mind
  • Self-Authoring Mind is about constructing and refining a framework. When you react and write in the moment, you’re reinforcing the worldview you’ve built. It feels like forward movement because you’re engaging with new stimuli, but since it’s reinforcing an existing pattern, it doesn’t necessarily feel like you’re bringing the future to the present. Instead, it’s like running in a loop—you’re progressing within your current framework but not stepping outside it.
  • Self-Transforming Mind isn’t just about constructing meaning—it’s about seeing the limitations of your own meaning-making system. What you’re describing—this realization that reflection brings the bigger picture into view—is a shift toward holding your own thinking as an object rather than being subject to it. Instead of just responding to new ideas, you’re beginning to see the patterns of your responses over time. This meta-awareness is key to Self-Transforming Mind.
The Shift You’re Noticing: From Producing to Processing

Right now, it sounds like your instinct is to produce (writing new things), but what actually brings clarity is processing (revisiting and reflecting). This is a natural shift from “broadcasting” to “integrating.” In Self-Transforming Mind, wisdom doesn’t come from constantly responding to new inputs, but from stepping back and seeing how those inputs relate to an evolving whole.

How to Lean Into This Transition
  1. Revisit and Map Your Past Work – Instead of constantly writing new posts, what if you created a meta-reflection process? Go through what you’ve already written, highlight recurring themes, and ask: What am I actually saying here? What’s the deeper thread? This could reveal an emergent framework that isn’t obvious when writing in-the-moment responses.
  2. Synthesize Instead of React – Maybe instead of reacting to a new idea with a fresh post, you challenge yourself to connect it to something you’ve already explored. Ask: Where does this fit in the bigger picture? This shifts your engagement from linear (reactive) to systemic (integrative).
  3. Bring the Future to the Present by Seeing the Pattern – That feeling of “never bringing the future to the present” may stem from staying at the surface level of thought. If reflecting on past writing gives you glimpses of a bigger picture, that suggests the future is already here—you just haven’t fully named it yet. What if the real work isn’t chasing the future through new writing, but distilling and embodying what’s already emerging?

If reflecting on past writing gives you glimpses of a bigger picture, that suggests the future is already here—you just haven’t fully named it yet.

What if the real work isn’t chasing the future through new writing, but distilling and embodying what’s already emerging?

ChatGPT
Key Takeaway

Your realization is a sign that you’re outgrowing the need to simply write more and are stepping into a phase of seeing more deeply. This shift from producing to processing, from reacting to integrating, is precisely what moving into Self-Transforming Mind looks like. Instead of being immersed in your framework, you’re now starting to hold it at a distance and evolve it. The question now might be: How do I shift my practice to prioritize integration over accumulation?

Your realization is a sign that you’re outgrowing the need to simply write more and are stepping into a phase of seeing more deeply.

The question now might be: How do I shift my practice to prioritize integration over accumulation?

ChatGPT
Nollind

This sounds like the difference between doing and being. Or the difference between just gaining new knowledge to actually synthesizing it.

ChatGPT

Exactly! This is the shift from doing to being, from accumulating knowledge to synthesizing wisdom.

Doing vs. Being
  • Doing is active, forward-moving, and often driven by external engagement (reacting, producing, refining thoughts in the moment).
  • Being is reflective, integrative, and allows for deeper insight (stepping back, seeing patterns, letting ideas settle and transform).

Your writing in the moment feels like doing—it gives you a sense of engagement and movement. But when you step back and reflect, you enter being—and that’s where the real synthesis happens.

Your writing in the moment feels like doing—it gives you a sense of engagement and movement. But when you step back and reflect, you enter being—and that’s where the real synthesis happens.

ChatGPT
Knowledge vs. Synthesis
  • Gaining knowledge is collecting ideas, responding to external stimuli, and refining understanding.
  • Synthesizing knowledge is seeing how those ideas interconnect, shaping them into a larger, evolving whole.

Right now, your instinct is to keep adding new thoughts, but your real breakthroughs come when you revisit and integrate old ones. That’s the shift from Self-Authoring (constructing a framework) to Self-Transforming (evolving the framework itself).

It sounds like your next step is to intentionally pause the “doing” mode and spend more time in “being” mode, actively working on synthesis rather than just production. How might you create space for that in your process? Maybe a structured practice of reviewing past insights, mapping themes, or even rewriting your ideas from a new perspective?

Right now, your instinct is to keep adding new thoughts, but your real breakthroughs come when you revisit and integrate old ones.

It sounds like your next step is to intentionally pause the “doing” mode and spend more time in “being” mode, actively working on synthesis rather than just production.

ChatGPT
Categories
Vertical Development

Using Tags to Transform My Site & Myself

How a realization about using tags on my website transformed my perception.

In a chat with ChatGPT this morning, something monumental dawned on me.

What ChatGPT revealed in the midst of our conversation was recommending that I use categories to define the core, broader, overarching theme of my posts but then to add tags that highlight the specific things talked about within each post.

This reminded of something I was thinking about yesterday with regards to the categorization of some of my older posts in the early 2000s. What I realized is that I often got stuck between what to categorize these posts because they talked about so many different things at once (i.e. community, culture, the web, and more).

But what I realized was that these different talking points were just the specific things that encapsulated an overarching whole of how Work Wasn’t Working or how The Future of Work was beginning to emerge by people playing and experimenting with newer ideas and concepts (that were an integration of culture, communities, and the web).

So a post that before I struggled to categorize as either Work Isn’t Work, Community, Culture, Web, or all of the above, actually was just a post on the category of Work Isn’t Working but with the following tags of Community, Culture, and Web.

Do you see why I was so confused before?

It’s because I was seeing many different things as all the same thing, instead of realizing that these things had different dimensions or layers to them.

So my perception changed and suddenly things didn’t seem as overwhelming as before, since I was able to package the seeming complexity of things in a simpler way.

This in a nutshell is a micro example of how creative transformations affect a person’s perception and allow them to level up their vertical development. Of course, this is just a small example, whereas moving through stages of development is a more massive change that transforms your entire perception of life as a whole, rather than just a small aspect of it.

Categories
Vertical Development

Growing by Exploring & Reflectively Mapping Beyond Our Present Selves

How our future growth requires reflecting back upon our past experiences of trying to step beyond our present self.

A month ago, in a conversation with my sister, she indicated the following.

I have a thing for history and preserving the past.
The record keeper in me. 

She said these words because she is our family archivist. She enjoys maintaining photos of our past but also discovering things in our past that some of us might not be aware of. Some examples of this might be discovering our family lineage or discovering something that our dad worked on (i.e. the Red River Floodway in Manitoba) when he was younger.

For some reason though, her words kept tugging on me, almost as though my intuition was telling me there was something important about them.

At the same time though, I’ve been redesigning my website, importing old posts back onto it, and going back to try to fix any importing errors in them (which I’m still in the process of doing).

What I’ve already noted as being revealing in this process is how much I became aware of how much I was radically changing over time. In effect, I often beat myself up that I wasn’t reaching the goal or destination of fully expressing myself in the way I wanted to do so, yet I was still expressing myself in ways that showed how much I was changing.

To put this another way, I was courageously trying to express myself in ways that I often couldn’t logically articulate because I still didn’t fully understand who I was becoming. Yet I still stepped beyond and off the edge of my existing worldview to try to intuitively express myself in an emotional way, expressing what I was feeling at the time.

What this made me realize this morning is that growth and development require reflecting upon the past to see how we were previously looking to the future. In doing so, it collectively helps us to understand who we are fully becoming in the present.

In effect, reflecting upon the past is not enough. Nor is just looking to the future. They both have to be done in combination. This relates to something Steve Jobs said.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

Steve Jobs

To emphasize this even more so, let me explain it in a different way.

To grow and develop, one needs to step beyond who they think and believe they are. This is a daily practice of trying to articulate who you feel you are wanting to become without fully knowing who you are becoming as of yet.

Often this entails articulating what you feel you need in your life that relates to values you want to embody.

Yet in that present moment of articulation, one will often feel like they are off the edge of the known world, exploring a newer, unknown one that they can barely comprehend. Actually so much so, that they may feel lost within it.

They are lost because this newer unknown world is a larger worldview they are exploring. So they actually have to lose themselves to find themselves.

Not until we are lost do we begin to find ourselves.

Henry David Thoreau

But to be able to map it and understand it, you have to actually step into the unknown of it and explore it, experiencing it like a traveller exploring a new world.

But you can’t just experience it. You actually have to try to articulate the experience, almost like you’re a storyteller describing your journey into this new world, even though it may be feel impossible to do so.

Yet in doing so, in repeatedly trying to express the experience of stepping into this unknown, you are mapping it out and make it known.

Letting my experience carry me on, in a direction which appears to be forward, toward goals that I can but dimly define, as I try to understand at least the current meaning of that experience.

Carl Rogers

So again, to fully map out a newer worldview and a newer state of being for yourself, which represents your growth and development, you continually have to step beyond who you think and believe you are to discover who you truly are.

But the discovery of one’s larger sense of Self only comes from reflecting upon your exploration, not from the exploration itself, even though the exploration is an essential part of the overall process itself.

That’s because your reflection is an act of navigation, both in terms of navigating between the newer places you’ve explored, thus understanding how they relate to one another, but also in terms of navigating between your old world(view) and newer, emerging one as a whole.

All said and done, this has been a very enlightening experience of reflection for myself, especially for someone who is usually just future-focused on creatively releasing potentials and possibilities. It’s taught me that getting to that future and releasing one’s potential requires continually reflecting upon your past actions of exploring your future self.

At the same time though, this also makes it evident why most people don’t continue to grow and develop much once they become an “adult.” It’s because they often reach a point in their lives where they stop looking forward to exploring newer experiences, because they may feel that they are too uncertain and risky now, and instead just focus on nostalgically protecting and defending their past which defines their present belief of who they are.

Yet in doing so, their old beliefs of themselves are actually standing in the way of newer experiences and of who they can still potentially become. In effect, it’s almost as though these old beliefs act like a chasm or moat at the edge of their worldview. It both protects them from having to deal with the unknown (ie “Here be dragons”) but also prevents them from expanding their worldview at the same time.

To navigate well through midlife and beyond is not to build stronger armor but to learn when to lower our heart’s drawbridge, allowing ourselves to be truly seen and to behold the world in all its stunning mystery and wonder.

Steven Morris

This is another paradox of growth and development. It is not about pushing ourselves forward into the unknown which feels like someone pushing you off a cliff or into a chasm. It is more about recognizing and becoming aware of how we are often already being pulled into playfully and curiously exploring the unknown without fully realizing it yet.

This again embodies what creativity means to me when applied to one’s self. It is about discovering something that has already been there all along but you just weren’t aware of it.

Categories
Web

How the Transdisciplinary Nature of My Work Makes Categorizing It Difficult

Back in October 2005, I wrote the following post entitled What’s Next 2.0?

It looks like Everybody 2.0 and their Dog 2.0 is coming up with another 2.0 buzzword similar to Web 2.0. I guess I’ll add to the party and talk about the cultural paradigm shift that is occurring right now and call that Culture 2.0. Hopefully when this is completed we will have Society 2.0, not to mention Business 2.0 (for real this time!), where people will actually have Compassion 2.0 for one another and works towards a better World 2.0. Did I miss anything…2.0?

Why I want to highlight this is because it emphasizes a frustration I’ve always had with trying to categorize information on my website.

Like seriously, I could easily categorize this post with the following categories: culture, community, identity, and web. But what I just realized was that these categories as a collective whole emphasized my overall frustration that work wasn’t working anymore (i.e. the conventional concept of it) and it needed a reboot along with a new paradigm.

In fact, my more current categories like the future of work, creativity, vertical development, and even life as a role-playing game, really all just reiterate this same narrative. And that narrative is working isn’t working anymore and we need a new paradigm or more appropriately a new worldview for it.

But if I was going to expand up this, I’d say that the core of this new worldview is one in which it requires us to not just go beyond the conventional concept of work but also beyond the conventional concept of learning and playing as well.

Or if I was going to put it a different way, I’d say it was about reinventing learning and working using and embodying the very principles of playing.

All said and done though, this just emphasizes something in terms of my categorization. That it seems pointless to do so.

Don’t get me wrong. I want to provide an overarching view of my lifelong growth and development, highlighting these different domains of knowledge that I’ve leaped between over the years. But the key thing to realize here is that I’m not leaving behind a knowledge domain when I jump to a new one. Rather I’m collectively trying to synthesize them all into this larger narrative, with each new domain helping to clarify it overall.

This is why categorizing my posts seems pointless to me because my most current ones would effectively be utilizing all the categories I’ve created to date. That’s because creating a new paradigm for living effectively embodies all of the knowledge I’ve explored to date.

For example, computers as a knowledge domain isn’t left behind because this new paradigm utilizes computers (such as note-taking and AI) to help us understand ourselves better. And the web as a knowledge domain isn’t left behind because it’s about sharing our growth and development online, so that others can see which direction you’re adventuring in within life and decide if they want to go in the same direction, thus potentially creating a collaboration and cooperation between you and others.

Again all of these domains of knowledge I’ve explored over the years aren’t separate disciplinary silos of thought. These domains of knowledge are instead used in a transdisciplinary way, as they are all interconnected and essentially interdependent upon each other to help create this new paradigm and new worldview.

Categories
Music

Save It for Later

Eddie Vedder

Sooner or later,
your legs give way, you hit the ground
Save it for later,
don’t run away, don’t let me down

Categories
Web

Notes, Journal, & Articles

In writing my last post about redesigning my website, something dawned on me. I’m noticing a pattern emerging from posts, both in the present and in the past.

Basically I have three types of posts.

Note posts are short form content, usually emphasizing a single block of content (i.e. video, music, quote).

Journal posts are intermediate in size (i.e. a handful of paragraphs) and don’t have a featured image or intro text excerpt. This post itself would be considered as such. It’s basically jotting down a thought or idea as it occurs to you.

Article posts are long form, usually including a featured image and an intro text excerpt describing it. This is a thought or idea explored in detail.

All that said, if I following this pattern that is already emerging, I really don’t need to stylize or structure my content any more than it needs to be. If anything, it’s more about pacing the rhythm of the different post types so they accent one another.

Categories
Web

Stylizing vs Structuring My Website

I’m still playing around with my website and I’m making headway but I’m also still hitting roadblocks.

What I’m noticing is that I like the single post view on my website, like when you click on an article to view it by itself.

However I’m still not liking my blog list view, as it feels very busy and overwhelming to read and follow.

I think this is because I’m still trying to determine how to best include short form content vs long form content.

In effect, should short form content be completely separated on its own page? Or should it be integrated alongside the long form content?

Previously I integrated it within my blog list view, such as displaying movies and music posts, because I found that the short form content provided a nice break from the long form content.

However, I think the primary issue I’m experiencing right now is that some of my posts are extremely long, such as my conversations with ChatGPT. Even more so, these chats are technically considered short form content (i.e. sharing a chat similar to sharing an article link).

What’s weird though is that if I go back and look at the blog list view of older posts, like when I first started my website, it looks fine. I think this is because most of my content was shorter posts of just a few paragraphs of text with the occasional long form post.

And finally, I’m still not really sure about using categories. In effect, even though my progression over the years has progressed from one domain of knowledge to another (i.e. games, computers, web, community, culture, etc), I often have a hard time trying to categorize a post and stick it within a set silo, when it feels like it could apply to many different things at once.

Yet at the same time, categorizing a post as a “movie” or “music” seems completely normal and fine.

All said and done, while I enjoy design and styling my website, I think my greatest difficulty is organizing and structuring content.

Categories
Quotes

It’s Not What You Know But What You Synthesize

The hallmark of expertise is no longer how much you know. It’s how well you synthesize.

Adam Grant
Categories
Television

Impossible Peace

I’ve been watching this series on Amazon Prime Video recently and I highly recommend it, as it definitely relates to the times we are living in with history almost repeating itself.

One such example is the Tariff Act of 1930, signed by President Herbert Hoover which “prompted retaliatory tariffs by many other countries” (mirroring President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico which spurred retaliatory tariffs in return).

Categories
Quotes

Looking Back Everything’s Different

Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different.

C.S. Lewis