Last Sunday I wrote about the magical gift box Gerhard Molin handed me. A set of AI prompts that started interviewing me. It opened me up creatively in a way that I hadn’t perhaps ever experienced. It also brought with it reflection, gratitude, and action. I wouldn’t be writing these essays every week had it not been for that simple gesture.
It’s so funny. I didn’t even realize it when I wrote that article.
That wasn’t the first gift box.
The first one was a box of colored pencils.
A year ago, after the first time Gerhard and I met, he asked me if I journal. This was after spending a weekend together with twenty other amazing humans at a retreat. A weekend with reflection, gratitude and action at the center of it.
Oh this is how we pray.
“Do you journal?”
“Yeah... not really.”
Now... I reflect constantly. I’m what you might describe as an over thinker, over-analyzer...a lifetime of a nervous system living in a state of hyper-vigilance. And I remember everything. It’s one of the things that led me to that very place. But I’ve never really had a journal or captured my thoughts. Not opposed, just didn’t have the habit.
He said, “go get a box of color pencils and some paper. Document what you’ve experienced here.”
Not just any pencils, either. Faber-Castell. I asked which ones and he named the exact set. And the exact type of paper.
It took me a couple of weeks to actually get them. But I was pretty motivated coming out of that conversation. And then they sat in a box for another couple of weeks before I finally opened them. It was only when a friend came over and busted them out that my inner child said “heyyyyy those are mine, let ME do that too.”
The first thing I drew was a house.
The kid one. You know the one. Grass along the bottom. The sun up in the corner. A house with windows. A simple tree. No family or dog though.
And I kind of laughed. Because I drew it the exact same way I did as a kid. Same sun. Same house. Nothing had changed.
It made me remember all the doodles I used to make. The Cool S, attaching the lines. Swirls and squiggles. Dots and concentric patterns. Sacred geometry.
I hadn’t really drawn anything since the teddy bear in sixth grade. If you read “I just stopped.” a few weeks back, you know that story.
This week I came across something on X that felt like incredible validation.
Jash Dholani calls it the “toys theory of greatness.” He looks at people who changed things and finds, near the start of their story, a toy. Einstein’s father showed him a compass when he was four or five. The Wright brothers got a toy helicopter as kids, played with it until it broke, then built their own.
His idea: if you want to find your work as an adult, go back to the toy that had you hooked as a kid. Sometimes literally. Sometimes symbolically.
I went back literally. Same house, same sun.
After the doodles came lists. My friend and I wrote down dreams & goals we had for the next year of our lives. We even both signed it.
Later, I added values I’d used at my previous companies. Trust. Grit. Growth. Collaboration. Passion.
Then I kept going. Last year was a lot of spiritual exploring for me, so I started writing down the belief systems I’d learned about. Hinduism. Shaivism. Buddhism. Christianity. The Red Road principles from Native American traditions. The Santo Daime.
What do I believe in? What do I stand for? What does it mean to be a good person?
And then, okay, who is that person?
Teacher.
I just like helping people. Almost everyone in my family is wired this way. And we don’t really talk about it, we just... do.
In tech, I was always good at taking complex things, simplifying them, and getting folks excited about them. I think I even have a LinkedIn rec (people still do those?) from almost 20 years ago saying that very thing. Getting people excited about them, helping them feel like the Kool-Aid Man, ready to bust through the door. I’m a projector in human design if you’re familiar with those things. Give me a clock to put around my neck, I’m the ultimate hype man. Yeah boi.
The time is now.
I think the teacher in me isn’t really about explaining things. It’s about getting people motivated to go after the knowledge, the dream, the idea on their own. Plant the seed. Help them find their own spark.
It led me to my purpose. Eleven Dunbar came shortly after that.
Last week I wrote that the journey inward leads upward, and eventually outward. Looking back, that’s exactly the order it went in.
I’ve had this conversation with a lot of people. The one about being ready for the next thing. The next phase. Idea. Location. Mountain. You get to one peak and the second mountain looms just ahead. It comes from members. People who apply. People who reach out that say the messages & vulnerability resonate. Friends. Former colleagues and even investors.
It keeps coming back to the same things. Listen to your own voice, not the should statement. Start with creativity and play. Be in nature. Meditate. Gratitude. Go be a kid.
Give yourself the gift of permission to be or do the thing. It should be called Pre-mission, because that’s what you go on once you grant it to yourself. Permission Impossible until you do.
The pencils went back in the box, though. It was just a rock causing a ripple in the pond. Besides, I have digital crayons now (the gift box).
I picked up a handpan shortly after and it became the creative toy to put me into open mode as John Cleese calls it, whenever I want.
So what was my childhood toy of greatness, really? I mean, it’s all of it, right? My room growing up, with my toys and my video games. It was smaller than a dorm room. Bunk beds for my brother and me. A big closet with two doors that connected on the inside. It was the corner of the house, so it had two small windows. A dresser, a mirror, and a TV with the NES and the Super Nintendo. I escaped to other worlds inside of books and to imaginary places in my mind with action figures.
My toy was my imagination.
A safe space to express and do the thing. What was missing was the ability to share it with others.
On Friday, I asked who your first online friend was. Mine came in high school, when I got a computer. Ultima Online... which was one of the first big online multiplayer worlds (before World of Warcraft). Suddenly, I could be deep in my imagination and play, and chat with people from all across the world while I did it.
That’s the room I keep coming back to. A safe space to make things and play. To learn and grow. With really special people operating with the same sense of awareness, motivation, and agency.
Reflection, Gratitude, Action.
Today I moved. Away from the place I think I’ve lived longer than any other since leaving home when I was 18. The walk through the park out front of my old place won’t happen again. But I’m finally moving to a beachfront place, a lifelong dream of mine. Why it took me five years in Miami to do this... perhaps it’s coming right when I need it. Perhaps future me knew it would come at the exact moment it needed to.
Let the waves wash away your worries, and build (sand) castles with your dreams.
The colored pencils are in storage with everything else. The house drawing too. What’s coming with me is a suitcase, my handpan, the digital crayons powered by my favorite childhood toy.
On Wednesday’s podcast there was a card in our game that we never got to: invent a ritual for the first night in a new home. I don’t know mine yet. I want to get into the space first. But tonight I’m going out to see the moon, take it all in, and give some gratitude.
When you move, the universe moves with you.
New home. Same little kid.
What’s your box of colored pencils? And if you had it now, what would you do with it first?