38 / Scary Clowns. Your Name. River. 20-5-3.

Ignorance is bliss...sometimes.

Aug 10, 2021

After a week off the grid, I’m feeling re-centered and happy to be back! Any summer vacationers this week?

"Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises, don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned about doing good work. Protect your work and if you build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency." – Patti Smith

Nowadays every company, person, or group has a brand. By sticking to your values and offering good work to others, we let others know what our brand stands for. With this in mind, how are you representing your own brand? The brand of [insert name here]?

I've always been a big believer in 10-minute walks or breaks, but didn't know the psychology and science behind the effects of the outdoors until learning the 20-5-3 Rule. We don't spend enough time in nature. See you outside this week!
The Tokyo Olympics feature some amazing new data analytics technologies that give us average athletes around the world a chance to understand the pressure of the games. There are six mentioned. My favorite: you can learn an archer's blood pressure mid-shot with cameras that are "analyzing the slight changes of skin color generated by the contraction of blood vessels from the captured video." Amazing.
Less than a month left to support my IRONMAN fundraiser. I’ve been pushed physically and mentally over the last year for so many reasons. I sit here thankful for the lessons learned while training: grit and exploration to name a couple. I’m registered for IRONMAN Maryland as part of the IRONMAN Foundation team. As I continue to learn, I want to give back to the foundation that works to pass on the same lessons.
Have a need to secure a written letter without an envelope? Maybe not. However, back in the days before wax sealant and envelopes, people used intricate letter-locking techniques using only paper. "These tricks for tamper-resistant communication have sometimes even played a role in pivotal historical events."
When it rains at home, where does the water flow? This website has an answer to your question. Click anywhere on the map and follow the path of the water all the way to the ocean! One surprise I found: rainwater in North Dakota flows all the way out the Mississippi River.

What to do With Scary Clowns?

Ignorance sometimes is bliss.

(Read this online here.)

VR and Clowns

My heart was racing, but all I was doing was standing in the living room. I looked silly: panic-jumping and tiptoeing around the living room. It was everything I wanted it to be.

I was engrossed in one of my more immersive VR experiences within the movie It.

It is a 2017 remake of Stephen King's movie about a scary, shape-shifting clown named Pennywise who haunts children in a small town. Not for the faint of heart, as the director says, "It's a story of love and friendship and a lot of other beautiful emotions."

It has been on my mind because of a revelatory concept from the main character: that Pennywise eats children because that's what children are told monsters do.

Pennywise is only real because the children believe in it. The clown is simply playing right into their own fears and capitalizing on them.

The belief in and recognition of the demonic clown bring it to life for the kids.

There was a similar thought in the 3-2-1 Newsletter:

"Attention is the oxygen of conflict. When you fight a problem, you breathe life into it. When you starve a problem of your attention, you suffocate it. In a surprising number of cases, the way to solve a problem is to ignore it."

Avoidance

"The Losers Club" from It would agree: paying attention to a problem, or a clown, makes it real. Avoidance and ignorance are, in some cases, the solution.

Avoidance is one of the five styles of conflict resolution. I'm learning to let go of being in control, and focusing on the things I can control; avoidance has been a helpful framework. It helps me spend less time on things that just might work themselves out anyway.

An important note: each method of conflict resolution has utility, depending on the nature of the conflict at hand.

It’s never easy to identify which problems to starve, but simply recognizing avoidance as a valid method of conflict resolution can help, because it is often forgotten or frowned upon. What scary clowns are you facing that would be solved by paying less attention to it?