Over the years many trends have come and gone.

I’ve watched the dot.com boom then implode.
I’ve watched the 49ers be a dynasty, then become a laughingstock. I watched Barry Bonds set unprecedented records, then get a record.

I’ve watched the Golden Gate Bridge toll go from $2, to $4 and now $6.

I’ve watched many fads come and go. From noodle houses to smoothie shops to cup cake cafe’s, and now, my favorite of all, Artisan Coffee shops.

The few things that have remained constant in my life over the years are that I’ve lived in this place on Russian Hill, had my office on Clement Street, driven European cars, owned a classic Italian Vespa P200 and… I have consistently done the work that I do mentoring teens into their adult life, and help facilitate their growth and evolution into truly substantial people.

Each year a new batch of young teens get introduced to me, and me to them.

It typically begins the same. Their parents think this would be good for them. They come in begrudgingly, expecting it to be boring and equating me to a therapist.

Somewhere in that first meeting I find something to offer them that makes them realize this is not that, and that this in fact has something of real value to offer.

They agree to come back a second time…

Now skip ahead 4 years. Instead of them being 13, they are 17. Instead of them being 16, they are 20.

We have bonded. My voice and my opinions have legitimate status in their lives. They feel lucky to have this relationship and to be able to call on me as they sort their way through the often complex freind situations, pressures and decisions they need to make to live the life they want and become the person they want to be.

A few relationships will fade along the way.

Most will fade because their parents will decide they don’t want to invest in this in spite of their kids protests, some parents will pull the plug because of their protests, some of them will make it to their senior year of high school or through their Freshman year of college, then just when the real deep transformative work begins that will truly build the foundation for who they become as adults – when they know enough to realize they have to make some serious decisions and make some serious commitments – they’ll bolt, “firing me” as I like to call it.  Some will return a few years later. Some won’t. It’s not my job at that point.

For many though, they will go the distance. We’ll stay connected in a significant, meaningful way for years… long after they have committed fully to their lives as adults.

I’ll get graduation invitations, calls when major decisions must be made or intimate relationships are crumbling and in several cases now, invitations not just to be at their weddings but to speak at their weddings, and in October, to officiate one.

I was thinking about this this morning as I was sipping my newest favorite Artisan Coffee (Kenya AA from Looney Beans) and contemplating the new high school students I’ve met in the past few months and weeks… wondering how many of them will go the distance, gain the full value of this relationship and more importantly, of this work… and who won’t…

It’s not up to me to decide. It’s my job to do my work, with excellence, precision, consistency, genuine dedication, and a leap of Faith. It’s a responsibility and privilege that I do not take for granted. Kind of like this damn good coffee…

Now back to work…

A little background:

I met them when they were in 8^th grade. I’d been contracted by a local Middle School to run groups and work with some students one day a week. Somehow over time, these three managed to work in a routine with me where they would get their lunch, come to my office and meet with me.

We’d talk about whatever we talked about, mostly listening to them bitch and moan about school, laugh about friends and every now and again, let me bring up some point about life that might have lasting value.

The point wasn’t what we talked about. It was that we were talking at all.

Most boys their age do not have any relationship like this with an adult outside of their home, not in any meaningful way at least. Yet here they were in a very innocent yet consistent way, connecting with me and allowing me into their world.

When the year ended and we had our last lunch, I told them to remember this day… that what we had here was special.

Then I proposed to bring them together again four years from now when they were graduating High School. I told them though it sounded far off, it would be “just a blink of an eye”. They agreed to have lunch four years later.

That was June 5, 2006. Today is June 5, 2010

We had lunch today.

Two of them I had seen a few times over the years, bumping into them at some spot around their town. One of them I hadn’t seen since that day.

They were all no longer middle school boys. They were young men – and all bigger, stronger and faster than me… and all far more experienced with girls, sex, partying, and other joys and complications of teen life than I ever was at their age.

They were all adulterated by these  experiences and challenges as well, each to varying degrees.

What was more intriguing to me about seeing them, was what wasn’t spoken about.

As I sat there so many things came into my mind that I could tell them and offer them. I didn’t though. They weren’t asking for it, no matter how much they could benefit from it. There was a reason none of them reached out to me over the years for personal help like so many others do.

They were each on their own path to manhood, and theirs did not include choosing to have me along with them to guide them and help show them the way – at least not over the past four years.

So I enjoyed catching up with them, hearing where they were headed – one to the military, one to play college sports, one to work and attend college locally – and I enjoyed listening to the banter between them in the language they have all learned through their years growing up as guys in this community.

When it was time to leave, I had a moment with each of them. I needed to say something. There is only so much staying silent I can do – especially with three young souls as raw and loaded with potential as these guys.

I will keep my comments to them between us, with one exception. To this one what I told him, he agreed with my assessment without hesitation.

On the way home I thought further about it and decided to reach out to him with a simple email, inviting to make a commitment to have lunch with me once a month and if so, I would make the commitment in return. It is 50/50 that he’ll take me up on it, but 100% certain on my end that if he does, it will open up a whole element of life to him that he just hasn’t gotten to you yet and may not for many years.

Why did I make this offer?

Because it is who I am and this is what I do – and I make no apologies for it anymore.

For the sake of the countless boys out there like these young men, I wish there were countless other adults out there like me, having lunch with boys on the cusp of manhood, offering them their knowledge, their insights, their wisdom, but most importantly, their time… and what a time it was.

Jeff Leiken

June 5, 2010

® Likone Corp 2010

It isn’t because we have some liberated, modern family where gender roles are rebelled against and we have some intention to model some different way of life for our daughter. In fact, I find that whole movement of de-feminizing women and de-masculinizing men to be abhorrent, weak and utterly unhealthy.

The reason I like doing the dishes is actually very simple:

Because it is a task I can do and see the finished  results in just a few minutes. When it’s done, there is completion. The kitchen is clean. The countertops, clean. And I can walk away having finished what I set out to do and lived long enough to see it completed! Almost instant gratification with something that matters!

That may sound strange, but considering how little of what I do in my life comes with that kind of tangible, obvious completion, it is actually something I find relief and great satisfaction in experiencing.

The nature of my life and my work is the opposite of doing the dishes. With few exceptions, everything else I do is a work in progress:

Raising our daughter is a work in progress. Being the husband I want to be for my wife is a work in progress. Helping my clients grow into  the serious kick-ass young men and women whom they want to be, is a work in progress. All of these takes months, years and even a whole lifetime to do to completion, and the challenges, decisions, actions, mental processing and requisite learning never ends.

In part this is because I refuse to grow stagnant, complacent and engrained in a way of doing things that is outdated and irrelevant like the vast majority of our education and psychological treatment systems have become.

The world we live in is changing constantly and I refuse to be caught with my head up my ass delivering the same message and doing things the same way that worked a decade ago, when the people I interact with are not the same, are not living the same values,  nor are they growing up in the same world.

My quest to stay relevant is not driven by a desire to stay in business. It is driven by something far deeper in me – something that only those who have a similar sense of calling about their life work seem to fully understand.

About 6 years ago, my Mentor made a comment to me that I had finally acquired enough skill and knowledge to be comfortable and successful for the rest of my life. I was 35 years old and I knew he was right.

I knew how to speak to audiences to evoke the emotional responses that made them feel inspired. I knew how to connect with kids and teens in a way that gave them serious hope – and I had a lot of knowledge about how life works to offer them that made me relevant well into their adult lives. I could reach many young people who were rapidly heading onto a path of mediocrity and turn them around to move towards real greatness.

Yet inside me, it wasn’t enough to be a big fish in a very small pond, nor was it enough to be better than the alternatives but not nearly as good as I knew was possible.

At times, I wish I were the kind of person for whom just being “an expert” was good enough. It makes life a lot easier. Especially with the standards in our inept society.

I’m not that person though, and I have to live with it every day of my life.

I have known geniuses. I have known a few true masters. I know what they put in and went through to gain that kind of depth, brilliance and capacity.

After 20 years of doing and studying this work, realizations and breakthroughs are coming rapidly now. Things I was not even capable of understanding even a few years ago and blowing my old work out of the water.

They are also making for a whole lot more new work to be doing to build an even deeper and broader foundation – work that will take years to complete and then by the time it is done, will likely have been supplanted by something entirely new to be building into the model and methods of how I live my life, do my work and find fulfillment.

Given that’s the way most of my life is, taking a brief break to do the dishes is incredibly satisfying. Okay enough for now, the kitchen sink is full and there’s just too much to say in one posting here.

As a means of keeping our own health and sanity, my wife and I take turns getting up with her, giving the other a chance to sleep in.

Today was my turn to get up and it was a late wake up, almost 6am. After a long day yesterday of flying to Palm Springs and back to speak at a conference, I could have used about two more hours of sleep, but parenting demands that I no longer have a choice.

Saturday mornings are also the local Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building on the waterfront in San Francisco. It starts at 7:30am and if we get there early, we can park, beat the crowds and get the freshest free samples of locally grown organic everything, including things I don’t think are possible to actually make organic.

(I’m convinced that one day someone will make an organic microwave oven, but that is for a different posting)

Wanting to get there to stock up on a few supplies, I quickly moved her along to get ready to go.

Made her tea, give her a snack, morning “pit stop”, dress in warm clothes, socks and shoes on, jacket, down the stairs, to the car… We were parked and walking to the Market by 7:40am.

Great teamwork. Working together like a fine tuned machine. At this rate we could do what we needed, buy the supplies including the flowers for the week, sample the cheeses that are too expensive to actually buy, and still get home in time to make and eat breakfast before mommy woke up.

We were cruising. She listened great, stayed by my side, moved quickly with me. It was near perfection. Until… We began the walk back to the car and she found a small flower petal wedged between two rocks on the edge of the sidewalk. Then she found a washer that must have fallen out of a workman’s pocket. Then she saw the famous San Francisco parrots hanging out on a tree across the street. Then she found these bricks that were holding up a temporary fence, and was awed by the grass growing up in the holes in them. She had to step on every one of them.

I’m watching the time. We have 7 minutes to get back to the car or the parking fee doubles. Now it is 6. I find myself getting impatient. Two more flower petals and a red string… 5… Someone stops to compliment her hat and she has to chat with them too… 4…

My guess is every parent reading this, can relate.

I was about to snap and just then, I stopped myself.

What am I doing? I am thinking about where I want to get to, what needs to get done today, the schedule we need to keep to get to the party at the park today. All things that aren’t happening now. I am not living in the present. She is.

I’m in my head, stressing out because of time.

She’s in the world, living in real time.

What really matters? Should I rush her to put her attention on what isn’t happening, or should I just let her take in the world as it is? Is it really that urgent that we are home by 8:45? Is rushing her and interrupting her experience of being really awake and connected with the world, just to save $6.50 on parking, really worth it?

Again, in my head asking all these questions, not out in the world with her… but I’ve slowed down and let her be engaged with life, connected with the world, operating in real time, not human constructed artificial time.

We make it back to the car with less than a minute to spare – without rushing. I am calm now. She was all along.

I get her in her car seat, strapped in, secure, load the groceries, get in myself, clip in my seatbelt…

Then suddenly, “Daddy, I have to tinkle! I have to tinkle RIGHT NOW!”

Nature calls, and always on it’s own time. Fight it as much as we want, and it always comes back to win. I give up. And I’m so much more alive because of it. How lucky to have her there  - and the intention my wife and I hold to preserve this in her as much as we can  - to remind me.

One side of the dilemma is the need our kids have for  intellectual training and development, which includes the use of technology and the critical role that having competency with it plays in today’s world. This need exists because the world we live in has grown far more sophisticated and advanced, and being positioned to successfully engage in commerce and in most career paths, requires a relatively high level of intellectual and technological sophistication.

The other side of the dilemma is the possibility for true aesthetic growth and development, and the depths of personal, emotional, spiritual, and relational maturation that becomes available to those who have this. By aesthetic, I mean quite literally the quality of life that comes from being sensorially aware, awake and attuned via the five senses – literally the capacity to fully experience being alive in all its wonder, splendor and diversity – and the sense of imagination, creativity and magic of life that belongs implicitly to those who live this way. To me this is where real intelligence, intuition and brilliance emerges from. (In this case, I borrow the term “aesthetic” from my Mentor Joseph Riggio, who defines it with even further refinement and in far more eloquent language than I)

(I am reminded of Albert Einstein’s quote: “If you want your kids to be intelligent, tell them fairy tales. If you want them to be really intelligent, tell them lots of fairy tales”)

The way modern society has evolved, it has become difficult, if not impossible, to have both without either losing something of enormous consequence (as one 17 year old client of mine said to his father about his SAT preparation, “Dad, it sucked out my soul!”) or placing extraordinary demands on parents to provide the requisite experiences to their kids – a demand in time, energy and serious resources (like investing in bringing someone like me into their kids lives, a service few invest in until they are in crisis).

Intellectual growth now takes place almost exclusively in schools and behind screens.

Aesthetic growth is left to parents to instill through experiences they offer their kids and the space they create for it to be nurtured, when they have the time and in some cases, when they have the interest which sadly, some just don’t. Either way, the growing presence of school, homework and dependence upon technology consumes more time than ever. As one parent said to me recently, “It feels like school and homework have taken over our home life. We all look forward to vacations now.”

As oversimplified as this may sound, it is nonetheless true:

Our schools have become degree factories, intent on creating high testing achievers with off the charts intellect. No Child Left Behind only amplified a direction schools were already inclined towards anyway. It succeeded in making it almost impossible for teachers to teach anything of the aesthetic, to the extent that it even can be taught or developed in a classroom. No Child Left Behind certainly succeeded at one thing – in leaving a whole chunk of Childhood behind.

With rare exception, for most parents in today’s world, a “Good School” is one where drive-by shootings are highly unlikely and advancement into elite schools and careers upon graduation is highly likely.

That requires generating the right numbers, scores and stats – and the students become the vehicle for this.

“On one hand they tell us go out and be somebody real,” said one high achiever at an elite private high school. “Then in the same breath they say, just make sure you do a bunch of BS to stack up your college resume too, even when it really has nothing to do with who you really are and is only to make you look good. It’s all such bullshit and most of my friends see it too.”

In spite of all the lip service the elite high schools pay to being about creating well-rounded, critically thinking young adults, the reality for most of them is that they base their status (and high tuitions for private schools) on who goes where once they leave there on the prestige scale, not on the quality of impact their graduates make on the world, unless that happens by chance.

The elite colleges, are equally as one-dimensional. They are not about making the world a better place, they are about having more financially successful graduates whose career success boosts their status and their endowments. Again, the teachers in these institutions who actually do care about more than tenure and test scores, get screwed just as the students.

I know this statement is so generalized as to be easily dismissed, yet I challenge anyone to disprove it. Even the teachers and administrators in these schools will tell you the way it is. Just ask them they way I have.

There was a time in history where intellect was equally developed outside of institutions, and elders all assumed the responsibility for preparing the next generation. There are ways to blend both the intellect and the aesthetic, but with rare exception, that just doesn’t happen now.

I am reminded of the Jewish tradition that came from the Middle Ages of “The Tisch” (literally “the table”), where old and young gathered around the table each Saturday to engage in discussion and debate about the moral, legal and ethical considerations of the day. Go back even further and tribes gathered around the council fire with their young, to share the stories that shaped the morality and meaning for each upcoming generation. They created experiences and challenges that ensured they not only understood the ideas, but were actually able to live them.

Back then, the fate of the tribe literally depended upon them being able to apply what they were learning. Now, virtually nothing our kids learn in school matters that much in real life, at least not until they are in the mid-20s and actually doing something that matters – and our kids know it and resent it.

My own upbringing was filled with invaluable hours of stories and dialogues with my Grandfather, each designed to address the larger questions of life as I was ready to address them at each stage of my own development. He recognized the role (and responsibility) of an elder to engage me at the age when it would have been most challenging for my parents to do so because of my yearning for autonomy. Some very forward thinking parents hire me to do the same for their kids, preferring to select the role models for their kids rather than letting pop-culture do it for them.

My last conversations with Grandpa were when I was 24 – almost 18 years ago – and yet I still recall the points he made with me (mostly through stories) and the values he imparted, and they remain with me even as I write this today. They helped shape the man I’ve become as a father, husband, friend, mentor, citizen.

Last week over an intense conversation about a moral issue, one of my teen clients teared up when suddenly he considered what his Grandfather would think of him and the decisions he’d been making. I am never surprised to find that those who have this innate sense of connection with how their actions effect others, also had lots of the same kind of conversations with loving elders as I did while growing up. I also am never surprised to hear that those kids who don’t have this moral conscious, do not have these relationships in any seriously meaningful way.

Nowadays, kids watch Sponge Bob, Gossip Girl, CSI and porn.

They Facebook, WOW, IM, text and eat In-n-Out because their parents are often too busy to cook a meal, or they are too busy doing homework to help when the meal is being cooked. All the scents, tastes, subtleties of the aesthetic go un-experienced, including feeling the warmth from the stove, the sound of the dishes being unstacked from the cupboard and placed symmetrically on a table – the patience it takes to let the stew simmer until it is just perfecto… and the palpable experience of just sharing the space with others in a very personal, very human way.

The average family in America now that is electronically wired (meaning computers for all) spends 4 minutes together a day of uninterrupted time. My guess is some of you reading this have already stopped to look at a text message that came in since you started.

It takes more than 4 minutes a day to raise a child to have aesthetic awareness, to have real intelligence, to have a sense of magic and awe about the possibilities of the world we live in. It takes far more than SAT scores and AP classes to instill in young people a sense of love of learning, curiosity about the unknown and an appreciation for the aesthetic. SAT and AP classes may boost intellect, but they do little to promote true intelligence. (Over 80% of top students cheat on a regular basis, mostly as a means of survival amidst the competition and the volume of work that leads to burn-out).

Its no wonder so many of them are so disconnected, so self-absorbed and so damn lost.

It is no wonder so many of them drink, smoke and disappear into virtual reality on their machines, with no hesitation and no apology.

It gives them a sense of being alive in some way other than the dull, flat, one-dimensional reality their brains have entrained to (the average teen in America spend 6 hours  a day staring at screens). Anything to escape the stress and  boredom of modern schooling, and the deep sense of disconnect that is pervasive in modern society – the kind of disconnect that simple companionship with others will not resolve because what they are disconnected from isn’t people, it is life itself. (Any parent who has watched their kids go into tailspin depression after spending a summer at camp where they felt connected and alive, know exactly what I mean.)

Parents hire me to help their kids solve their problems. They also hire me to help them solve their kid problems. What I really do is not just to help them solve problems, but to help them truly thrive – to really live.

I am extraordinarily good at it when given the chance to do it my way:

To introduce them to a way of life that is exciting to wake up to each day… to reconnect them and reengage in them the sense of awe, potency and magic contained in the experience of being fully alive… Doing this lays the groundwork for finding real love, living with real intention and ultimately, living with genuine passion (the real kind, not the woo woo fluff fluff kind that fills the best sellers lists and makes people feel good. I’m talking real passion that goes like this: “Something you love enough you’d suffer for it – as much as it takes”).

This is why it can’t just be done in an hour a week in an office and why I am continually in contact with my clients as life is happening, and often, where their life is happening (since I started writing this I’ve answered two midday calls from a high school senior needing help getting centered to make a critical decision, and responded to two texts from a high school junior who wanted to share good news about an accolade he earned this morning – all before 11am on a weekday, all while sipping a cup of amazing tea, playing with my daughter every few minutes and giving my wife a hug when I get up to take a break…).

It is also why I use all their “problems” as a means of teaching them how to live life where these kinds of things not only aren’t problems, they typically don’t even come up… and why so many of the times before I give them the answer they seek, I tell them 45 minutes of insights, perspectives, examples and stories… stories… and more stories… because as Einstein said, I want them to be intelligent – not just soulless bored machines who can solve problems and then return to a mundane existence in front of their TVs, video games and superficial, self-absorbed, hedonistic approach to sexual relationships.

It’s about living an aesthetic life, merged with intelligence, blended with intellect… and helping them to do so before it is too late and their brains get hard wired into one-dimensional hell, and their soul’s get so jaded as to become resistant, or worse, indifferent.

Which leads me back to the crisis we face as parents.

We want our kids to thrive. And we want them to succeed in a competitive world. We want both, but we have a predominant system we submit our kids too, that only serves the latter.

We want them to have real joy, real love and real adventure. We also want them to be practical.

We want them to be idealistic, to dream big. We also want them to be “realistic”.

The problem though is that the price they are paying to be successful in competitive world, with practicality and while being realistic, is sucking the very soul out of what it is to lead an aesthetic life – the kind of life that so many of the most substantial humans to ever live, lived.

By achieving this modern success, many parents are sacrificing in their kids the potential of the real kind of success our world may really need.

For me personally, that is too great of a price to pay. My wife and I have already resolved this issue for ourselves and how we are raising our daughter. It is far more work to parent this way, but the price of not doing so is unimaginable to us.

My question is,  are others resolving this issue for their own kids? Are they even thinking about it?

Just like our kids need us, we need each other. We sure as hell don’t need more homework and school stress.

The question I’m endlessly grappling with, is what do we need and how are we going to do it, and who is going to join us on our journey?

Jeff Leiken

PS: That is why the ones who go the distance with me constantly say it is so hard to describe what it is I do when they talk to others about it. They just keep saying, “You have to experience it.” As one 17 year old client in Chicago said to me, “I can’t explain what it is you do. All I know is that every time I get off the phone with you I feel quieter, calmer, more focused and more positive about my life and where it is heading. And it is changing me into a person who lives this way. For the first time in my life, I feel like I am free to be really myself.”

Now that we are officially linked on Facebook, let me tell you my policy regarding what this means and what it does not. Before I begin, let me encourage you to not take anything I am about to say personally. It is not a comment about you. It is information about me. You are entitled to your own ideas and opinions and I think as well, that when you are done reading this, you will have more opinions than you do now. If so, for that reason alone, the effort I am making to write this will have been worth it. I’d love to live in a  world where far more people had more carefully thought out opinions.

First of all, by accepting my invitation or my accepting your invitation, this does NOT mean that we are Real Friends.

I only use facebook for professional purposes. I use it to have a public presence similar to my websites, to promote programs and ideas linked to my work and to allow people another means of staying in contact with me when it is helpful and or relevant to where I am and what I am doing in my life now.

Because this is solely professional to me, you can look at the two pictures I have put on my wall – one a professional portrait shot by a brilliant photographer I hired a few years ago named Kingmond Young, the other a photo of my daughter standing next to me on the shores of Lake Tahoe last Thanksgiving. You will notice that you can not see her face in the picture, just a silhouette taken from a distance. Only my Real Friends and those whom I otherwise designate, get to see a more intimate glimpse into my personal life, which includes pictures of my family.  I also understand that the moment I publish something on Facebook, two billionaires get access to it and can do what they want with it. That’s not okay with me. My guess is none of you have read the fine print in the agreement policy you have with Facebook.

So, I have that second picture up there solely because it represents that there is no separation between who I am and what I do, that I get how utterly insignificant any of us is the grand scheme of the universe and that I understand what is real and what is not.

Since this does not mean we are Real Friends, than what are we?

Good question. As far as I am concerned, we are what we are. There are only a few categories you can fit into in my life.

1. Family.
2. Relatives (different from family)
3. Real Friends.
4. Acquaintances I have some casual connection with
5. People I knew years ago but who are no longer in my life in any meaningful and contemporary way (which is the bulk of people on my “facebook friends” list)
6. Colleagues
7. Clients

Here’s how to know if I consider you my real friend.

1. We’ve had some meaningful exchange within the last year, and have regularly over all the years we’ve known each other. Thus our relationship is current based on who I am now and who you are now, not the shell of a person we were years ago.
2. We aren’t only “friends” now because in a moment of nostalgia we thought of each other, or because we saw that another “friend” had recently reconnected with you so we did too.
3. I could call you in need and ask for money, and you’d say yes without hesitation. I would do the same in return for you.
4. I was invited to your wedding and/or meaningful life ceremonies, and you were/are invited to mine.
5. We don’t bullshit each other when it comes to answering the questions “How are you?” And “What is going on?”
6. If one of us posts something controversial on our Facebook walls, and we decide to respond with a differing opinion, we treat each other civilly, communicate in a respectful tone, and don’t just delete replies we disagree with. This is the same as it would be if we were having lunch and had a disagreement on an issue that was personally meaningful to us.
7. You actually genuinely care about me and my well being, and I genuinely care about you and your well being. This is different than just wishing somebody well but truthfully not really thinking about them beyond that.
8. When we communicate, you take as much an interest in getting to know my wife and daughter, as you do in me – AND  I want you to know about them and care about them.
9. When we communicate, you ask about me and my life,  as much as you talk about yourself. When you ask about me, I want to share with you and feel it is appropriate to do so.
10. Being together brings out the best in both of us. We never need to feel guarded or inhibited in each others presence or in our communications.
11. We’ve stayed connected with each other even when it wasn’t easy or convenient, and the effort to do so has been mutual – not just one way.

If you can’t answer “yes” to all 11 of these, then we are not Real Friends. We are something else, and that is okay, it really is.

So, because this is used for professional purposes for me and we are not Real Friends, you can understand why I don’t respond to your IM requests on Facebook, why I delete your horoscope ads that show up on my wall or your corny comments on my wall, and why I otherwise ignore your updates that show up on my newsfeeds regularly. The fact is, I really don’t care enough about the relationship with you to put my time and energy into it, even though I do genuinely wish you well.

I’m 41 years old now, soon to be 42. I’ve lived long enough to know that life is impermanent, as people I grew up knowing and liking died at far too young of an age to make any sense. I’ve lived enough to have made substantial errors in my own judgment, enough that it cost me friends, opportunities and money I can’t get back. These vital errors also taught me to be far more humble, more mature and more careful – and they’ve helped grow me up.

I’ve lived enough to know that ultimately the only things that really matter to me and make any of this make sense are the qualities of the relationships I have and the quality and caliber of the impact my life has on the world. Ultimately the only question that seems to matter consistently to me is, “When I die, will it be said that the world was a better place that I was in it?”

Because of this, time and energy are the great limitations of my life. I must choose to use both wisely. Spending time chatting away idly with people with whom I have no real bond and no real relationship is a waste of life to me. Every minute spent doing it, is a minute I can’t get back.

I realize many people feel differently than me about this. They find this new means of reconnecting with people long since removed from their life to be a refreshing new realm of possibility to be connected in some satisfying and meaningful way. I think if being connected with me in a satisfying and meaningful way was really important to you, you would have done it with me all along, even when it wasn’t convenient like Facebook makes it.

I don’t know what the future holds for us and whatever relationship we will have. I do believe that some relationships are best left in the past. Others are worth revitalizing, updating and starting  afresh.

In the meanwhile. I hope that you find what I offer via Facebook of a professional nature is of value to you. I hope it piques your curiosity, engages your imagination, adds to your life and feeds your soul.  If, not, there is always some facebook application you can upload that might.

I wish you well. And to my Real Friends, let’s see each other soon. It has already been too long.

Best regards,

Jeffrey Leiken

San Francisco, CA

April 22, 2010

http://www.Leiken.com

2/3rds of them often do show up when given the chance. My experience consistently now is that boys this age are not just hungry for this kind of discussion and interaction, they are in fact starving for it.

The intention I held for this additional discussion with them last night, emerged from something one of them had said earlier that day. It had to do with how limited we all are by the beliefs we hold that have never been critically questioned. I pointed out to them how the more emotionally charged we become about our beliefs, the more closed minded we become.

No matter what point the boys brought up, I pointed out to them alternative viewpoints that could in fact be true, and that in fact had real validity. Some of them they loved. Some of them they didn’t understand. Some of them, they hated.

Jake really took issue with a point I made about how many truly successful and accomplished people do not follow traditional paths. I used examples of how many of them, like Bill Gates, even do things that most of these guys would never do, like dropping out of school to pursue their dream.

Jake felt that many of these people got there in part due to simple luck. His primary argument was that while it wasn’t all luck that got them there, luck as a factor could not be denied.

I refuted him and offered a different consideration. I argued that these people were in the midst of the same data and evidence as everyone else. The difference for them though was what they filtered and sorted for – in Gates case opportunity that he sensed would soon boom and he could be on the cutting edge.  Many thousands of young men Gates’s age saw the same news about computers that Gates did. They just read about them with a passing interest, while Gates though went after them.

Jake grew more adamant that luck counted. The more I refuted him and brought in evidence to the contrary, the more fired up he became. His primary reference was Malcolm Gladewell’s pop-culture book Outliers and his (in my opinion) endlessly oversimplified ideas.

I finally turned to him and said, “Jake you are not going to win this so give up.”

That’s when the tears welled up… “But you are being too narrow and there is nothing wrong with there also being luck…! Aren’t you just… I mean by telling me I can’t win… aren’t you just being a HYPOCRITE!”

It was almost painful for him to say it. It took balls to confront me like that…

“Jake,” I replied. “Let me tell you why you are not going to win…. Because I am not actually debating you!”

He looked shocked and puzzled.

“This whole time with you guys I have held one intention, to raise your awareness to how fundamentally closed minded you become the moment someone challenges a belief you hold personally meaningful.

Not once Jake did you even stop to consider that what I am saying could be right. All you did was listen to me and try and figure out a way to prove me wrong. How can we ever as men learn and grow if all we want to do is prove ourselves right and anyone who doesn’t see things the way we do as wrong…

Jake if you could tell me that you have in fact in the past actually considered my perspective and after consideration, you’ve come to think otherwise, then you have a strong position. Have you? (he nodded no)… “Otherwise, all you are doing is wanting to be right…. Take that to the extreme and you have the Middle East. Israelis convinced they are right, Arabs convinced they are right… all of them programmed since birth to be utterly closed minded to any consideration that they could ever be wrong…”

Jake just stared at me. From the place he was sitting and the place I was sitting and with the lights we had outdoors at night, I was probably the only one who saw the tears in his eyes.

I looked back at him for a few seconds and he just held himself there, composed, feeling something enormous inside… something I recognized and know all too well… These are the moments that present themselves as invitations to step into maturity. To be willing to let someone else be right, to allow someone older and wiser with ruthless compassion expose your blind spots, your weakness, your ignorance… and to do it publicly with his peers as witness… and he let me use his fired up response as a means of making the point to everyone… and he let me do it without needing to make it a point of being right… or getting the last word or anything to save his pride…!

I then told him, “Jake you have my respect. Any one your age who is willing not just to go toe to toe on an issue like this, but who is also willing to let me use them like this to make a point, has my respect.”

A few minutes later, we ended. As the boys were filing out, I called out to Jake and asked him to come back. When he did I shook his hand again and said, “Jake, I want to reiterate to you that you have my respect in more ways than you may realize. And I do not say that lightly.”

He replied, “This was really helpful. You are really smart. This gave me a lot to think about.”

And as he was walking away, I called out one last line, “Who knows Jake, maybe I am the one who was LUCKY to meet you…”

He smiled and walked on.

Laying in bed last night after this, thoroughly exhausted from a day of holding the space for groups of boys to experience this work, I was also profoundly excited.

I replayed the many conversations with boys like this over the past few weeks, many of them at a few select summer camps like this one who have stepped up to bring Boys To Mensch into their world. I thought about what a gift this experience is to these boys and how so many people out there just completely don’t get it.

Then, in my own honest arrogance, I thought, any camp that doesn’t bring this to their program is utterly stupid.

Of course, maybe I am wrong… but then again, maybe I’m not.

http://www.BoysToMensch.com

The only thing was that the purchase I made didn’t get credited in my new account so I would have to go to their online website, click through three pages, create ana online account and insert a 20 digit receipt code, to get my credit.   There was no way I was spending another second on this let alone to create yet another online account somewhere and have to keep track of it.

I asked them if they could just void my sale and then do it again immediately, but this time under the new Frequent Buyers account. Very quickly the young sales lady did this, and handed me the new receipt saying, “This is your new receipt.”

I quickly thanked them and grabbed my items and headed towards the door. As I was about to go out the door, I noticed the new receipt said $0.00 on the bottom. I paused and looked at it again. This didn’t seem right as it should have said $34.

I stopped and called over to the sales people and said, “Are you sure you charged me? This receipt says $0 on it.”

The lady quickly explained how crediting back the old and buying the same new, leads to a “zero exchange” which is what the receipt reflects.

Darrin then said, “I LIKE THIS GUY! HE ACTUALLY IS HONEST. HE DIDN’T JUST WALK OUT…”

I quickly responded, “Yeah Darrin. And believe it or not, I actually live my life that way…”

On the drive home I thought about the exchange. Particularly I thought about what a pathetic statement it is about our society that my honorable gesture stood out so much that it got that surprised response from the Assistant Manager, even in a Baby’s-R-Us store. Clearly he, like many store owners, do not expect customers to be honorable in these circumstances. I’ve heard enough stories to understand why.

There are two considerations that always go through my mind:

1) What would be Grandfather have done in this situation?

2) What would I want my daughter to see me do and thus learn to do herself?

The answer becomes for me, a no brainer.

I have many conversations about these kinds of things with the kids I work with, many of whom  have friends who shoplift or cheat in various ways all the time, and some of whom do it themselves.

Some of the most disturbing stories I have heard in my practice in the past few years are the stories about parents who make far more money than I do, not modeling this kind of behavior for their kids. I’m sure these parents would be embarrassed to know that their kids talk about this side of their life with me, at least I hope they would be.

I am grateful that these kids do bring this up with me though. The fact that a 15 year old is still struggling with defining morality and ethical behavior when their parents no longer do means there is still time and more importantly, still hope.

Far and away the most common thing that those who work with me share, are parents who are determined to raise their kids with their more traditional honorable values, even in a culture that often times does not and when it is made especially challenging because other parents around them are not living by these same values.

It stopped me dead in my tracks.

Me: “Where did you come up with that one?”

Him: “My economics teacher.”

Me: “Well your economics teacher is a Stupid F#CK” !

The kid, startled, looked at me glazed eyed and asked, “What do you mean?”

Me: “I mean that is a stupid f#ck’n thing to say, a stupid F#ck’n thing to believe and a stupid policy to practice.”

Him: “Well that may not be exactly what he meant…”

Me: “Yeah well my response to your teacher is “You must have a very unrewarding life since you are a school teacher, in the lowest risk profession, teaching a bunch of unsophisticated kids who don’t know enough to challenge you on anything. No risk in your life therefore no reward.”

Him: “Harsh.”

Me: “… and I am just getting started!!!” (and any one who doesn’t understand how I work and why I do this the way I do it, will probably think it is even more harsh than this teen did… One thing for certain, he was listening and will remember…)

Who permits idiots like this to teach kids such stupidity? Forget it, I already know the answer, WE DO. Day in and day out in fact our kids are exposed to utter stupidity, outdated information and narrow thinking by often times well-intentioned school teachers and we are nowhere around to be there to insulate them from the assault on their sensibility and in fact are expected to stand by and support the invasion of this nonsense into our home lives in the form of “home-work”.

I sometimes run into parents – typically dad’s though occasionally mom’s – who have been encourage by their spouse to meet me and support me working with their kids, and who upon hearing a little about what I do, respond with “Well isn’t that my job to be doing that for my kid?”.

Of course it is our job as parents to be doing this for our kids. I also think it is our job as parents to be surrounding our kids with strong, positive, morally mature wise adults to help us as well. My wife and I have already begun searching for them and collecting them for our children to have in their life as their teachers and advisors… people I’d much rather them get advice from than from their peers who know little or nothing more than they do (which is where most teens get their advice). I firmly believe (and have substantial historical evidence to support this belief)  that it was never intended to be a parent’s job alone to raise kids into adulthood. It was always throughout history, the shared responsibility of the community, especially for the elders of “the tribe” to play a critical role.

And yet these same parents who are so discerning in engaging my services (and I encourage them to be and respect them for doing so), will hand their kids over to school teachers for 7 hours a day for 12 years with little to no vetting, and often with no challenge whatsoever to the content, method or approach these teachers teach, offer and take with their kids. Now, having worked in schools and closely with them for almost 15 years now, I can say first hand I have met some phenomenal people working and teaching there, people whom it is a gift and inspiration for kids to be able to spend a year in a room with. Sadly though, I’ve also met too many idiots like this guy; and too many uninspired, burned out people who by law can keep their jobs but who by any order of ethical code, should have been cut loose years ago.

Yet we allow the system to dictate who our kids must be exposed to for hours a week, years at a time and do virtually nothing about it or the content they push on them… This to me is a##-backwards!

If my son came home and told me the teacher told him “Risk = Reward” I’d be in the teacher’s room the next morning. If indeed it is what the teacher said, I’d be grilling him on what exactly he thinks a teen-aged kid will do with information like this… On the difference between considered, critically assessed risk versus random risk…on the difference between correlation and causality… on the difference between association and equality…  on what exactly risk means and more than anything on what constitutes reward… By the end of our chat, the teacher and I would either be much closer together (and for an idiot like him that would likely mean him much more like me) or I would be taking this to another level in the school…

Then regardless of the outcome with the teacher, I’d be taking my son to speak with real life people in the financial and business world who apply real life economics, and have them sit down and begin talking with him about the realities of risk and reward, of painful and costly mistakes by taking foolish risks, how they could have avoided them had they paid closer attention to the signs that are always present… I’d let them offer him “street smarts” from the roads in real life, not the hallways of isolated institutional academia…

Then when that was done, we’d be going and meeting with a group of people in their 80s and even 90s who could teach him about what they know about what it means to have REAL REWARD in a life… the kind that makes a life worth living… the kind that makes a life RICH regardless of whether or not a person is wealthy.

I read this article last night about how 2009 Idol Runner-Up Adam Lambert wants to be a “Superstar”, and has said this explicitly. Winner Kris Allen though says he just wants to have his music be “respected” and wants to be “respected as an artist”.  

This was evident all along and is, on some level, the reason Kris won and Adam didn’t.

We live in a culture that so values fame, money and superstardom that this has become the dominant marker of success. In my practice which focuses primarily on teens and young adults, the “Superstars” are the ones who go to big name colleges and who get significant public recognition & praise when they do. Many of these kids do whatever it takes to get into these Superstar schools, even when the majority of it is just to boost their application appeal and has no authentic representation of their interests, their true beliefs and their soul.

I hate it. I hate that we do this in this culture. I hate the fact that we brainwash kids to think they are only truly successful when they are “rich & famous”…

More than anything I hate adults like Adam who want to be an image and have the perks that come from it, regardless of whether or not there is substance beneath it (and in Hollywood-America, the vast majority if our Superstars do not have much substance beneath them). 

In that regard, I have no issue with those who become Superstars as a result of their true substance… as a result of their truly hard earned success… time tested character… those who have been initiated by the true tests of responsible adulthood… In this regard, Michael Jordon can have all the money and fame he’s gotten and I know unequivocally that he does not define his sense of self-worth by how others perceive him, by the money and fame…He did it for the love of the game, the thrill of competition and this has been documented by many of his teammates and associates for decades now.

 Adam Lambert though did everything he could to be a famous star and in so doing, on a stage of amateurs, he lost. He’ll win at Stardom though in the way that most who get there do… Most likely he’ll be a hit now, make some big money then within a few years will be playing Reno or will be a second rate draw of a name on a Broadway stage like Taylor Hicks has become… There he’ll be competing against actors who are far more talented than him, who have paid more dues and who while they may never get the notoriety Adam got on this TV show, will build  a career on legitimate talent, skill and character… and will also likely never be as rich and famous… I hope that doesn’t lead them to think they aren’t successful though. 

The path of the artist is well traveled… it has a legacy dating back eons… and history shows that the true artists, the ones who created something new and whose life work proved to be of sacred value, lived lives that could stand the test of time, built character that could withstand the inevitable windstorms of life… 

The path of pop-culture Superstar is well worn now too, if only in modern society.. It is filled with stories of eventual drug abuse, divorces, scandal, suicides… 

The wisdom of life teaches: Better to build a small house on a deep, solid foundation then to build an enormous mansion built of straw….