The Why

We are profoundly lucky to live in a world filled with inspiring ideas, scientific progress, and enormous amounts of free information. If ideas alone were enough, though, wouldn’t we already live in a utopia? Separating the good from bad and true from false requires critical thinking and is perhaps one of the key bottlenecks to addressing challenges like sustainability, inequality, and climate change. It’s essential to recognize that solutions to these global challenges begin with individual actions and choices. However, even when the "perfect” idea is identified, the process of change itself is difficult. Who has not struggled with doing what they already know they need to do - exercising more, having a difficult conversation with a partner or coworker, or simply saying no to a request that is not values-aligned? Society and organizations consist of individuals, and the potential for change is the sum of each individual’s ability to do so - what hubris we must have if we think to change the world without changing ourselves!

My Journey

Having built companies and managed them and teams in diverse contexts (my background if relevant), I could not help but notice that what tends to hold us back as individuals and groups is not the availability of knowledge or the "best" theory, but rather our inability to see reality for what it is rather than what we want it to be. If we are in fact able to do this, we also must accept this reality and move to act on it if we are to change ourselves and impact the world in our own unique ways. We all know that we need to lose weight, be more active and eat better, deal with our individual emotional issues, work hard to meet our personal and professional goals, etc and what we need is not the perfect theory but to put one foot in front of the other to explore what works for us. And yet, it is sometimes so hard to get up just a bit earlier and put on our shoes to go for a short run! Having embarked on my own journey of growth and experienced countless modalities of coaching and therapy as well as having read hundreds of relevant books from psychology to "self help," philosophy to scientific papers, I recognize this ground truth in myself.

The Mission of the Revolutionary Character

Revolutionary Character is my own small contribution to help us build the capacity for change within ourselves so that we can thrive and ever more effectively contribute to the problems faced by our friends and families, our communities, and humanity as a whole. The focus is on building this capacity while inspiring others to do the same, leaving individuals free to pursue their own ideals rather than die on the climb towards utopian ideology. I believe deeply in the potential of humanity rooted in beautiful imperfection and know that we have within us what we need to change and deal with poverty, inequality, hunger, sustainability, climate change, and all the challenges we face. If we look back in time it is evident that the world steadily gets better in unpredictable and beautiful ways when we work together to solve problems large and small rather than waste energy fighting to defend rigid and inflexible ideologies that don’t match reality. It is this problem solving that the Revolutionary Character course and community seeks to empower. I hope to see you there!