| Hello, hello! As the first twelfth of 2019 comes to an end, I send along hopes that the start to your year has been wholly wholesome and that the perspective the turning of a year brings has re-oriented you and your internal compass in a way of the beneficial sort. On my end, January has been a month of processing and internalization. With the end of 2018 chock-full of exposure to new experiences (a ten-day vipassana meditation retreat, neuro-linguistic programming course, and my first experience with organized protest) this month was a chance to breathe and sit with newfound understandings as they interact with different aspects of life. Particularly from that deep dive into meditation, I’ve been acutely aware that we’re all always riding ever-changing tides of highs and lows and that everyone is struggling with something. Realizing the universality of that, I’ve felt more compassion and love for all my fellow beings this month than possibly ever before. I want to tell you about maintaining this compassionate perspective as it’s paid dividends this January. You see, I landed a part-time job at the front desk of a hotel in Flagstaff, AZ (it’s super cool because, with seventy-five percent down-time, I get paid to read books most of the time). What’s most interesting, though, is that I’ve been deliberately trying to see from this place of compassion as I check in each guest. Some guests arrive in excitement, often because they haven’t seen snow for years, decades, or even ever before. And at over 7,000ft in elevation in the middle of Arizona, Flagstaff has snow! When they bring that excitement, I relish in it with them. Others arrive late at night after a dozen hours hauling down Interstate 40. They’re often tired, cranky, and awfully good at finding reasons to complain. Worn down from a long day, their pain (not from driving, but allowed to surface from deeper depths because of the day spent behind the wheel) is sometimes directed at me for inconsequential reasons. I often witness this surfacing clear as day and strive to respond to it from a place of compassion and understanding. Perhaps an unorthodox way of working a front desk, it’s turned a mundane job into a profound, connecting, and in a couple cases, even spiritual act. This has resulted in an abnormal amount of positive feedback for the hotel and myself lately, so our manager told me yesterday. One lady who was having a particularly terrible time at another hotel even called down from her room afterwards to tell me I was going to be in her memoir. I often get caught up in writing about things that make for a better life, about places, practices, and other things we do. But lately, I’ve been attentive to how I do the things I do — to the approach — which seems equally, if not more important at this moment. Still, I found the highlights of my month ultimately tethered to place — in a spontaneous fourteen mile run around Sedona, an early morning climb up Mt. Wilson, and one heck of a down and back in the Grand Canyon (pictured above). This focus on approaching each moment with the right attitude and intention has been the air beneath the wings of my spirit this month, yet adventure and awe remain the unfailing thermals upon which my spirit sails. Point being: both what we do and how we do are worthy of consideration. Now, shifting gears here, I have something big to tell you about! Today, I’m releasing a new, downloadable guide: Man Bite’s Dog! A Radical Approach to Raising a Lot of Money for Charity. As many of you know, my writings started with a daily blog kept while pedaling a bicycle across the USA. A ride on which we raised over $96,000 for the children’s hospital that saved my life. After a second fundraiser backpacking three weeks through the Sierra Nevada mountains to summit the highest mountain in the continental United States and advising a bunch of others on their own attention-demanding charitable endeavors, I’m offering Man Bites Dog! to the world as a formula for others to raise tens to even hundreds of thousands of dollars for their cause. Both Man Bites Dog! and GO. now cost $9.99 to instantly download from my website. I’ve put a whole lot of time and heart into both, and three years into this life-affirming project, I figure it’s time to offer a way for others to support it. That said, I want these guides to remain accessible to all. Anyone can apply any discount to either guide by typing any increment of ten — 10%, 20%, 30%… all the way up to 100% off in the discount code box at checkout. Ex. “40%” = 40% off I also realize Man Bites Dog! is a niche guide and that chances are slim you’re itching to take on a major fundraising endeavor at the moment. I have high hopes for this guide, though, and aim to help lots of people do lots of good! If you know a person or organization that could put this fundraising formula to work, I’d deeply appreciate it if you’d forward along this email or this link. Here’s a little video introduction I recorded for Man Bite’s Dog! yesterday. Til next month! With love & stoke, Ethan |
