Why Delusional Optimism Is Necessary (Sometimes)

Where I've been and an invitation to join me for a healing workshop in February

*** Join me in Colorado this February ***

Kinetix Workshop: Transforming Pain and Tending Our Terrain
Dates: February 23rd to 28th, 2025
Where: Longmont, Colorado

There are physical-spiritual laws governing the human organism that can help us move through pain and illness with equanimity and wisdom. During this workshop we will explore the physical-spiritual laws of degeneration and regeneration, pain and freedom, chronic illness and environmental toxicity, and the spiritual invitation in all painful conditions to align our daily actions with the voice of our conscience.

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Dear friends,

Sitting at a bustling coffee shop a week ago, I felt immense relief to hear a new mentor of mine confirm that he, too, is afflicted by the blessing/curse of delusional optimism.

“It’s the only way to achieve anything extraordinary,” he said.

“Most days I wonder if I’m really smart or really stupid,” I confessed aloud.

“I wonder that about myself every day” he replied.

We both laughed.

This man is a serial entrepreneur and investor, and he’s been a client of mine since 2014. A few weeks ago I asked him if he’d be willing to give me some business advice, because I’ve been floundering so spectacularly lately. We met for lunch, and his feedback sparked a series of recent breakthroughs.

One reason I’ve been floundering is that I’ve been trying to do too much at once, which has resulted in failing to do any one thing consistently, or skillfully (or at all). Like this Substack. Despite my optimistic intentions to do so, I have not been writing and sending these letters every week.

You can do anything, but not everything.

You can do it all, but not all at once.

Knowing the above, I’ve been in “cave mode” for months, doing the dark work necessary to choose.

(‘Dark work’ refers to what we do when people aren’t watching us, when we’re not being rewarded externally in any way; when only we know the level of effort we are putting in, as we work towards a personally meaningful goal).

Choosing has always been difficult for me.

When I was just 4 years old my parents had my astrology chart read, and the reading was recorded on a cassette tape. They gave the tape to me as a gift for my 16th birthday, and I was astonished that a stranger could so accurately pinpoint my quirks by looking at the position of the planets at the time of my birth.

With uncanny precision, the astrologer told my parents (back when I was only 4 years old) that fairness and equality were so important to me that I wouldn’t be able to play with just one stuffed animal or toy - I would need to play with all of them at once, because if I chose only one then I would feel bad for the ones I didn’t choose.

That is precisely what happened in my childhood; and now, as an adult, I haven’t known how to choose between Substack, YouTube, podcasting, writing books, teaching courses, and founding a School; I haven’t known how to choose between helping people in pain find answers and healing, or teaching Kinetix to practitioners, or teaching practitioners in all fields how to address the whole human organism (and how to do so lawfully, by giving up their state issued licenses).

And so…

I’ve been sitting in the uncomfortable unknown for as long as it takes to choose, and choose wisely.

What is actually most important?
What can I actually commit to?
And, based on the answers to these two questions - what will I need to let go of?

You can do anything, but not everything.

Perhaps you, too, have had a hard time choosing. And perhaps, because of this, you’ve found yourself - like me - not choosing at all, mired in indecision. Sometimes this place of not knowing is necessary (and sometimes we get stuck there for far too long).

Maybe this will help you, as it has been helping me:

First, we have to know what we’re aiming at.

What is the IDEAL ending to the story?

This is where delusional optimism can be a superpower.

Because we have to see something so beautiful, inspiring and world changing (or life changing) that it pulls us through all the obstacles and hard times, which are inevitable.

When we know what the goal looks like in the end, then we can reverse engineer it and know where to start. We need delusional optimism to believe we can achieve the extraordinary; to do or create something that has the potential to change the world for the better. Sometimes, we need it to change ourselves for the better…against the bitter odds of severe traumas, or financial setbacks, or health challenges that society tells us are “impossible” to cure.

Delusional optimism is misplaced and becomes toxic when we lie to ourselves about how much we can actually do in a given day, or week, or month. This is where I’ve crippled myself lately.

There’s a famous saying that comes to mind:

“Most people overestimate what they can do in a year, and dramatically underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

We have to stretch our imagination and envision the ending.

We have to know what the goal looks like when it is all said and done.

Then, we can ask ourselves questions like the ones Ben asked me last week:

If you knew you only had 5 years to make this big goal happen, what would you do differently? How could you stack the deck in your favor?

Without knowing the destination, we’ll be groping around in the dark, shooting arrows at any moving target in a foggy forest, hitting the mark sometimes but never making progress towards our actual goals. We might look up one day only to realize we set our ladder against the wrong wall and we’ve been climbing towards something we don’t even care about.

The reverse engineering process works for resolving chronic pain, mending a relationship, building a business, restructuring society…anything.

First, we have to know where we are going. And we can go anywhere - but not everywhere (at least, not all at once).

Answers have been coming to me, slowly but surely.

This can be a painstaking process. It’s incredibly uncomfortable to sit in the unknown for this long; which is why so many people avoid it and take aimless action instead (including me sometimes).

That’s my update to you, friends.

What are you aiming at?

Please share in the comments.

My big picture aim is to build the School for Living Science: a hybrid in person and online school dedicated to a renewal of science, and of the healing arts in particular.

A place for practitioners to learn about the whole human organism, and the physical-spiritual laws governing our experiences of pain and illness, healing and freedom.

A place where people learn to become practitioner-scientists capable of treating individuals - instead of labels and symptoms - with clear insight into the true nature of the human being. The School will be multidisciplinary, with a variety of career paths (including, but not limited to, Kinetix). It will be a place to study what the human being is materially and spiritually, and in the context of society, planet and cosmos. Out of this understanding we can resolve any pain; heal any illness.

How will I get there?

I’ll share more, when I know more.

***

In the meantime, I am offering an in person Kinetix workshop here in Colorado this February, and I am so looking forward to being with some of you in person!

Because one thing I do know:

Learning, healing and growing together in person is incomparably better, faster, and longer lasting than anything we can do online.

When we gather together in person, we enter a group field and interrupt our own old, stale patterns. We laugh, we cry, and we let go of the burdens we’ve been carrying for so long alone. When we gather for a common purpose, like healing, we intuitively know how to offer support to each other; which means (for some people who need it) we get to practice receiving and feeling supported. This is, in itself, deeply healing.

There are still a few spots left.

Grab yours here.