Our next speaker is Preston Singletary, and he is someone's art that I've admired. His art is featured in the Seattle Art Museum, and whenever I walked into the Seattle Art Museum, like, his art leaves me speechless. It is so incredibly gorgeous and beautiful. And I have fangirled over his art for a long time, so I was like, oh my gosh, I get to introduce Preston Singletary. And I kind of emailed him out of the blue, and I was like, this isn't going to work, and I'm still kind of surprised it worked. I'm going to introduce you. All right, so I'm going to read this from your bio. So when Preston began working with Glass in 1982, he had no idea that he'd be so connected to the material in the way that he is. It was only when he began to experiment with using designs from his clinkett cultural heritage that his work began to take on a new purpose and direction. Over time, his skill with the material of Glass in traditional form line design has strengthened and evolved, allowing him to explore more fully his own relationship to both his culture and chosen medium. This evolution and subsequent commercial success has positioned him as an influence on contemporary Indigenous art. Through teaching and collaborating in Glass with other Native American, Maori, Hawaiian and Australian Aboriginal artists, he's come to see that Glass brings another dimension to Indigenous art. The artistic perspective of Indigenous people reflects a unique and vital visual language, which has connections to the ancient codes and symbols of the land, and this interaction has informed and inspired his own work. His work with Glass transforms the notion that Native artists are only best when traditional materials are used. It has helped advocate on the behalf of all Indigenous people, affirming that we are still here, that we're declaring who we are through our art and connection to our culture. His work continues to evolve and connect his personal cultural perspective to current modern art movements, and he's received much attention for striving to keep the work fresh and relevant. We are very excited and honored to have you join us, and I love having another fellow I'll ask and join us for this day. So, welcome Preston. This is a better mic. Yeah, much better. That was a brief introduction in Klinkit. Very few words that I actually know. I'm not from the Salish region, but my family actually comes from Sitka, so I am honored to be here on the land of the Salish and to learn through this last presentation a little bit about the region. And so, yes, we're from the north, but I grew up in Seattle. This is a presentation which is quite robust. I don't share as much as I can. I might run out of time, but that's okay. I always feel compared to share a lot of information about the journey that I took to become, well, to do what I do today. And so, I grew up in Seattle. This is some of my traditional regalia with my son who was younger. He's 22 now, so. Okay, that's what we look like with our traditional, some of our design work and the button blankets. This is actually my wife. She comes from Sweden, so she comes from the other side of the world, the same latitude as Sitka, Alaska, but over in Stockholm, Sweden. This was my father, so quite, you know, mixed in my cultural background. He's non-native, he was, you know, mixed European. But this was his passion. He was a very famous fly fisherman in the Northwest. And he also dabbled in lots of things, like creative things. He was very well book read. He was a great outdoorsman. He was dabbled in soapstone carving and painting. He wrote poetry and did calligraphy and all kinds of things. Between him and my mother, who was also a musician, played Delta Blues, and she did a lot of handicrafts. You know, basically, I was raised in a creative family. And so I guess it kind of wore off on me. I'm going to be jumping around quite a bit, so you're going to have to follow me through this, but it'll make sense in the end. May 18th, 1980, which I always say, fostered my career as a glass artist because some of the people, some artists took the ash from the glass and they melted it to create glass that they would make glass art out of. But at that time, music was my main passion all through high school. In fact, I went to school, I didn't go to college. I went, fell straight into glass blowing, but thinking that music was going to be my, like, I wanted to check the box, you know, rock star, working musician, you know, in the job application, but so I've always been playing music and I also will talk a little bit about that later. But this is the fellow that got me into glass blowing. This is my friend Dante Marioni. Here we are standing with an Italian master glassblower, and so we had the good fortune of befriending him and watching him and studying with him and assisting, and we picked up a lot of great, you know, ways of working. The Italian process is quite refined and they're considered some of the best glassblowers in the world, and we really had a great time working around him. But this was the main team that I worked with. This was a studio of Benjamin Moore, and so as I mentioned, you know, a year after high school, aged 19, I slipped into glass blowing in a factory and making Christmas balls, paper weights. Then I started to go to Pilchuck Glass School, north of Seattle, and that's where I learned about how artists work with glass. And this man here, Benjamin Moore, was the artistic director of Pilchuck, and he ran this studio. It was a very specialized studio that we made work for lots of different people. The one thing I have to say about glass blowing is it's such a team effort. It's a real amazing process. I mean, everybody's really working together to make larger, more complex pieces. You must work in a team. One amount of people that I work with is always two, but sometimes I have like five, four or five people helping me in the studio. So here we're down in Tacoma at the Museum of Glass. And so this whole time, you know, being a glassblower and working and training with, learning from other people, and going to Pilchuck School, I was looking for the Klinkett Way. This was the street sign up in Sitka. And this is my great-grandmother, who in the center, she was the one that grew up in Sitka at the turn of the century. She was born in the late 1800s, and she moved to Seattle in the 20s and she was widowed in 1919. And she had five children and then moved to Seattle with a man right here, pictured here. This is Dionysio Gubatayo. He's a Filipino man who traveled to Alaska and worked for the canneries and the fisheries. And they fell in love, got married, had some more kids, moved to Seattle. And that's what I, who I knew as my great-grandmother. So jumping into a little bit, I've tried to kind of structure this. I'm still working with the flow of the story because I'm preparing for my potential TED Talk. So I'm going to be able to strut around without my visual aids here. But so I've tried to equate the idea of raven in the box of daylight with the story of my career. And so that's how I'm kind of paralleling it. This is an exhibition that I put together at the Tacoma Museum of Glass. And it's traveled, it's traveling, it's currently at the National Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian Institution. So this is raven in the box of daylight. So this is basically raven in the beginning of time and raven is a white bird. And so he is looking for the daylight. And he goes to this old man, or he goes to the fisherman of the night first and he asks, where's the daylight? And this old man, they tell this old man who lives at the head of the Nass River. And so he goes to the, so this is the fisherman of the night scene here. And he goes to the old man and says, you know, can I come inside your clan house? And the old man shoes him away, you know, he presumably has lots of treasures inside of his clan house. But he also learned about his, the old man's daughter who is transparent. So there's a lot of symbolism inside this story and the transparent or the white bird, usually white animals in native culture are thought of as being special or having some kind of spirit significance to it. And the same with this daughter who is transparent. I don't know why she was transparent. So now we're switching to some of the early work that I did in the sort of the foundation of the things, you know, learning to be a glassblower, learning how to control the material. These are the earliest things that I did to kind of develop my skills. And these pieces are kind of large, you know, for blown glass, but these were what I was making based on the people that I worked with and worked around. And then one day I said, okay, I want to explore this native side of this clinkett design work. And so I started to work on these pieces and it's an upside down cedar hat form, you know, so you turn it upside down, it becomes a bowl. I discovered these shadows just purely by accident. One day my aunt came to a holiday open house at Benjamin Moore's studio and she knew that I was getting into this design work and she said, can we put the hat on this nice pedestal with the beautiful light and all this? Usually the assistants, we have a little card table over in the corner and so I said, sure, so we put the hat out and about 10 people followed to see what was going to happen and they saw the shadows and he was like, oh, look at that! And it's like, well, yeah, that's what I intended all along, you know? Of course, that was like the Eureka moment. I kind of felt like, you know, okay, there's something here that I need to kind of follow this thread. And kind of a little bit about part of what brought me around to this was, you know, this kind of notion of spirituality. I wasn't raised with any religious instructions, so this was something that when I read this Carlos Castaneda books, they were very popular in the 80s and there was something that kind of alluded to some kind of spirituality and this kind of ability to navigate within your dream time and it was quite fascinating, even though it's been, a lot of it has been debunked because, you know, it might have been falsified, but there was also some degree of, you know, inspiration in those books that I found fascinating.  Art and philosophy, you know, Joseph Campbell was a natural one because he talked about the power of myth, talked about symbolism and that's what I'm getting into with this Raven story and we'll get back to that in a minute but this is kind of, this is what led me to start to think about these things in different ways. This is, you know, his, Joseph Campbell's kind of archetype of the mythology in general about the hero's journey about, you can see it common in pretty much every movie, you know, you might look at Star Wars and say, okay, Luke Skywalker was, you know, his parents were killed, he was thrown into this situation and he has to struggle and fight and he finds Obi-Wan Kenobi and then that's his mentor and then he learns and he emerges on the other side, you know, victorious and, or you could say it's the same thing with the Wizard of Oz. I mean, Dorothy is thrown into this, you know, into this world and she has to follow this path and all of a sudden she learns things along the way, she finds her helpers and all these things and so this is, you know, if you break it down into almost every story you can find these symbols or these archetypes and so in a way it was kind of like my own hero's journey, if I want to call myself a hero, but this was the call to adventure. So this, when I started coming up with my career I had an opportunity to work at the Pilchuck Glass School which is where I had been attending for several years. We, it's only a workshop in the summer, it's a very short workshop and there's like five or six of them sessions and there's five classes to every session. Anyway, so we decided to, we pitched the idea to make a totem pole for the founders of the Pilchuck Glass School and so this is David Spencer and this was one of my first mentors and he was, lived up in Alaska, he was a very skilled carver, or he is, he's still, we still kind of work together a little bit but he designed this totem pole with some folks up in Haynes, Alaska and so we wanted to make this tribute to the Pilchuck School at their 30th anniversary and it was John Halberg who was the heir to Warehauser so a cedar monument seemed like really appropriate to represent him and as well he had this dagger here that we were, that was owned by a family of an Angoon and so he repatriated it to them and most of John Halberg's collection is in the Seattle Art Museum and it's quite spectacular, a really, really beautiful collection so he was celebrated by the native community, he was given a clinkett name for giving this dagger back to the Jacob family and Angoon and it was given a clinkett name so that's where we saw it be fitting to make this, tell this story because by tradition totem poles tell a story so here we're working together right by the glass studio so there's a lot of cool energy going back and forth and the carvers from Alaska came down and they worked with glass and here's a class that we created kind of helping the finishing of the totem pole and this is actually the only thing that I really contributed to it other than helping drive the project I didn't carve it but I made this hat and so everybody was kind of enamored well when's the hat going to get done? how's it going? so the carvers were like well next time you need a hat stand let me know because anyway, so this was like for me a rite of passage being at the school where I learned and I kind of discovered myself as an artist and working with these master carvers from Alaska was amazing some details of the pole here this represents Dale Chihuly's face this mask and you know that Dale Chihuly has only one eye so he has a patch so we didn't represent it literally but we gave this glass slash which sort of like Chihuly had this vision of glass and he's holding onto the wings of the raven with the sun bringing like the idea of him bringing Pilchuck into the world so this represents John Halberg with this dagger that he had repatriated we had elders coming down from Haines, Alaska to help with the installation ceremony so it was a really amazing moment at the time it felt like all the stars were aligned and I have to mention too this was days before September 11th this was like so at that time we were like on this absolute high only a couple weeks later feeling like wow what's happening in the world but this moment for me was amazing and it kind of put me on the map so to speak in many different ways this is you know some if I failed to mention we actually David Spenson is a neon artist too so we hollowed through the totem and we backlit it with neon with multicolored tubes so it's like an abalone inlay that is illuminated at night so it's quite spectacular these pieces and so it's been 21 years now and it's still standing we just actually gave it a fresh coat of paint so the bottom figure is John Halberg then you've got Dale Chihuly with the raven with the sun in his beak and then you've got Annie Halberg on top who is a patron of the arts so as I'm getting into this whole process you know from Carlos Castaneda to Carl Jung I was interested and fascinated with dream dream analysis because Jung actually had done a lot of studies around the Native American vision quest and analysis of dreams and so this was something that's really really difficult to follow you know his readings so I read some layman's books about you know this whole idea of this psychology so that kind of ties into my work along with Aikido which is a martial art that I studied for several years but it was... so all of these things coming together is what really kind of informs my perspective on this the... and like Aikido has a lot of roots in Zen Buddhism and it's often our instructor always referred to it as a moving meditation and but for me this was the fascinating part what really clicked for me was the idea that as you're grappling with somebody and somebody comes at you it's this force and you have to learn how to turn it and deflect it but when you're working with glass you're also moving and manipulating your body and you're turning this pipe and it's the same kind of feeling I had around that so it became like this kind of universal physical thing that was the connection that I had with it and so that was quite fascinating to learn... to find these correlations and these connections through all of these things so all of the... I mean working with the glass on a large scale too it's quite heavy so you're really kind of using your whole body to move everything so this is Joe David this was my mentor or my helper in the archetype of the Joseph Campbell hero myth and so he was a guy that introduced me to the sweat lodge in the summer of 2000 now this was the year before we did the totem pole so we went up to Pilchuk Glass School we started doing sweat lodges up there and he was... he was... you know... he's a very standoffish guy and finally I convinced him we have to make some plans we're going to be on the campus and we have to do this we're going to play around with glass and I get to help you and I want to build a sweat lodge up there and he said well okay I don't know because it's built on a tree farm actually the school but we got permission to do it and he told everybody it's going to be a suffering and sacrifice ceremony and those who want to know about the ceremony come and talk to him and by looking in their eyes he would tell you what you needed to know and then he would be ready to do the ceremony and I had never done one and I was kind of getting a little nervous about it and I said finally we were building the sweat lodge and I said come look into my eyes am I ready to do this? he goes well let me put it this way he says you better be and I said okay you know I said he goes you know okay and so I said okay okay so in four days time we did 11 days time we did four ceremonies and after that final ceremony he shared his name with me which is something that used to happen or still happens on the northwest coast where you assume new names if you maybe are growing as a person or you grow into for instance you might assume an ancestral name or something like that so Kakao and Cheeth was a name that is known on the coast it's from the new Chanulf tribe west coast of Vancouver Island so moving on when I'm starting to think about this Raven show back to the Raven show I was working with this man he was I called him the clink at Joseph Campbell he kind of shared with me these perspectives on the story and so back to the story actually we were going to work on this exhibition together but then he passed away before we could actually realize it so I had a look for another curator her name was Miranda Ballardi-Lewis and she's actually university and she's a curator and a writer and a doctor of native sciences so Raven back to the Raven story Raven asked to come into the clan house he's denied access to the clan house and so Raven has transformational capabilities so he changes himself into a speck of dirt and he floats down this natural spring where the daughter goes out with a ladle and she scoops up the water but because she's of high status in the family her whole family is of high status she has attendance to it with her so they take this feather and they draw this feather through the water and they see this little speck of dirt there's a little clear droplet which is supposed to represent water and then there's a little speck of dirt inside so they cast out the water and so Raven then has to reformulate his plan and this time he changes himself into a hemlock needle so this is Raven kind of in this mobile that's kind of moving illustrating the idea that Raven's transforming into this hemlock needle so this time she scoops up the water she swallows it and she doesn't see it the needle because it blends in with the ladle so she swallows it now Raven's inside of her and so he transforms inside of her belly into a human child so this is the idea of Raven inside this pregnant woman and in the old days they would dig a pit out behind the clan house and they would line it with furs and she's having trouble giving birth born on these fine furs so this medicine woman comes and says take the furs away and replace it with moss and so so he so when they do that then the child is born easily and so this child comes out is born this is a piece that is kind of animated this is supposed to animate or create the idea that Raven is transforming now and still a little bit of Raven detail there but this is how he gets into the clan house ok so now he's in the clan house so a little bit jumping back into my my studio practice my accomplishments are not my own but those are many partly that's some of the folks that helped me in my studio to execute my work to varying degrees and yet the Mallory Bravo I think talks about this ancestral lineage there are people that developed the art form that I practice in this new material in this new medium and there were people that would come after me so I'm just in between this ancestral lineage and continuation a few of the objects that I've made and some of these range from being traditional objects that I try to replicate in glass and so a lot of exploration about form and then trying to transform the design work to the glass and that's all that in a sand casting process so after the glass is formed then I'll do the carving away the black to expose the red in this case so it's carving through layers of color and create the contrast this is sort of an homage to basketry and these forms these rattles are inspired by traditional rattles that would be probably shaman rattles that were used for healing ceremonies masks and kind of exploring this whole realm of trying to make it look like the actual traditional form these spoons are trying to make every curve and integrate that design in such a way so inside the clan house now so Raven is inside the clan house and he's looking around at all these treasures these are the objects that are owned by the old man this is called what we call it's kind of an heirloom that's passed on through generations and kept together we had the same system of potlatching we were talking about from the previous presenters that was the way to elevate your status within the community but in this old man was hoarding these objects in his clan house so Raven is now this boy in child form he's kind of precocious mischievous so he's always rooting around and trying to find stuff he comes upon this box this is the box that contains the stars so he starts to play with the box he starts to when no one is looking he opens it throws it through the smoke hole in the clan house into the night sky and so everybody's like wow could you do that why would you do that so he's scolded reprimanded he was punished and after a couple of days they kind of forget about it so he's found this next box and this next box contains the moon and so again he's kind of playing with it and he's moving around and eating his food off it and then finally when no one's looking he opens it up and he takes the moon and he tosses it through the smoke hole and this time the old man's pretty disappointed with them and says you know gosh this is no good you're not following my instructions here so when Raven finds the third box the box that contains the son the old man's like no way can't have that one so Raven starts to fuss and cry and he refuses to eat and he's carrying on for days and days and driving everybody crazy and finally the daughter comes up to the father and says is there anything more important than your grandson and he says no of course you're right half wonders what's going to happen Raven transforms himself back into a bird he takes the son and then the old man immediately realizes that he's been duped and so he grabs on to the tail of Raven he grabs his tail and he holds them over the smoke hole and he instructs the man to throw a pitch on the fire and so he he takes off with the son and he flies through the smoke hole but he's turned black at this point so that's how Raven became black and so with the breaking of the daylight the people who are living in the darkness their whole life finally get to see what's around them and some of them are startled and some of them run off into the forest they become the forest animals and some of them jump into the water and become the sea life and some of them jump into the sky and they become the birds and the people that either stood up bewildered or some people say they stood up strong and proud and it became the human beings or they were too bewildered and didn't know what to do so that sums up mankind in a lot of ways so this stayed where they were and they became the clink at the human beings and then they started to adopt these animal symbols for their family crests and so all of these objects are adorned with the animal symbols from the different realms and so the metaphors of the Raven story in a nutshell is like out of, you know the world is in darkness and Walter used to love to use theology he would say the Bible reference he would say Jesus is the light coming out of the darkness into the light and also kind of talking about the idea of myth the word myth means something that's untrue it has two meanings it can mean it's an ancient mythology but it's also say people would say oh that's a myth, that's not true so we have this problem of sort of fighting our way outside or past this terminology that we use for our ancient stories Joseph Campbell talked about how important storytelling is and Walter also had different stories symbolism within the stories and shared them with me which he asked me to continue to share as broadly as I can the process of imaging was something that when you're hearing these stories I rely on all these visual aids to get my point across but Walter was really really good about talking about holding people's attention but without any without any pictures I need my pictures but so he said that in the old days that the potlatches would be listening to these stories over and over and over and it's the same thing as if our kids are growing up we found this this movie that we really liked I mean what would we do we would watch it over and over and over because it was telling us this story we getting it kind of down in our heads well in the old days we didn't have the visuals and so that the elders had this they had this that's where all the imagination comes from for these objects they had this process this imaging power in their brains that didn't require a lot of moving pictures so people start to think in pictures making art is a very meditative kind of process and so when you do that you spend a lot of time with doing something it becomes you unlock the creativity in your own imagination so light is a metaphor it's very universal so you start to look at these stories and you can see you can start to imagine the symbolism behind it we asked our teacher to shed light on a subject in the old days this is probably too old for you guys but there were comic books there was a character who would get an idea a light bulb would pop on top of their heads and getting back into the daughter that is transparent to the actual being it signifies a spiritual being and the whole idea that she gives birth to this child that's like the immaculate conception myth and sometimes people get upset when I use that and say we have the same stories we have the same it's right there how can you deny it you know Walter would say I just don't want people to think they can hug Jesus all of themselves so we're going to use that because everybody understands it and it's not unique to the Bible every mode of spirituality has some kind of origin of a virgin birth so it's really something that we should understand on a much deeper level I talked about the birth and how she was having a hard time giving birth and so the idea that take the fine furs out and replace it with the moss that was like symbolizes a virgin or I mean I'm sorry a humble birth a humble birth like again the Jesus metaphor so anyways there's a lot of metaphors and teachings within this you're teaching forgiveness there's stories about the cycle of revenge there's stories of other kind of cautionary tales about the cannibal giant there's so much in here and as I mentioned I have a lot of stuff here to share so I'm just going to kind of blast through these a little bit you know the metaphor of the sun and the moon and the stars you know the stars give us direction and guidance something that we look up to the stars we worship movie stars we think these are very simple trigger words that we understand and we can use the moon is not illuminated by itself it's the sun is reflecting upon the moon so the idea that there's this higher power somewhere or creator spirit that is also shining showing us that you know we have a spiritual presence in the night time anyways we breaking daylight this was another kind of aspect of my art side that surrealism modernism primitivism surrealism was the first thing since I didn't go to art school I started to look at books and I found it fascinating you know they they had regard for you know for Northwest Coast art the surrealist did and there's a lot of psychoanalysts you know around the symbolism in surrealist painting so I found that really fascinating but this is basically an African sculpture and I think it's I forget a Russian artist on the right but so you have a lot of these these you know in the era of modernism there was a lot of looking at work from at Native American African art oceanic art and so you know there was it led to this genre called primitivism which was looking at older forms of art and then bringing some of that meaning into the modern art so this is a Brancusi but then I started to sort of turn the tables on the modernist this is like my little Brancusi fish this is Picasso and and a Haida mask from Alaska and so a lot of these things you start to wonder like you know this issue of appropriation and of course it was from a natural appreciation of what they were seeing but there's also like an unlearning of what they were you know what the modernists were trying to do they were seeking something new and so they were trying to deconstruct their way of thinking to be able to create something different and so I went on this whole sort of this is another side of what I do I showed you the representational kind of stuff but these are pieces that are more based on amulet forms and spare organic forms but of course they're ornamented with Northwest Coast art and sometimes they try to get into the symbolism and tell aspects of different stories or just sort of create you know something I give it a poetic name that it becomes people can read into it what they wish but this to me you know represents the idea of a modernist piece of art kind of this Henry Moore or Isamu Noguchi and so a lot of this was just kind of playing you know with new directions and trying to illustrate certain things you know this is kind of like a raven sculpture two sided raven and then these are often inspired by shaman's amulets which you know could be little fetishes that are carried with you or worn as a necklace what have you so these are some of the newer pieces and then really touching on the modernism thing this is like Calder was the very well known for doing these mobiles and so a little bit about indigenous artist gatherings have traveled around quite a bit working with Maori and Hawaiian Australian Aboriginal so here we are down in New Zealand with the Maori people you know incredible people of course you know the haka so here's me doing the haka there looking very fierce but the yeah the Maori are just incredible people really really unified really really education educated progressive and unified as a people and it's amazing to see what they are accomplishing down there sometimes you get to blow glass and I can share my technique with them but it's led to a lot of collaborations this is Jodi Naranjo Santa Clara Pueblo so each time when I collaborate with somebody I usually let them kind of take the lead in what the imagery is going to be and so these potters you know it was perfect because coming from a glass blowing background I was able to just have an easy time to make the form and they have to put the designs on it so these are all done with the same technique of covering the piece with the rubber stencil and then cutting out the areas that are going to be sandblasted here I am in Australia and then this Aboriginal artist came up to work with me in a cold middle of December from the hottest one of the hottest places on the earth and this was some of the work that they had done here again Joe David was of course my mentors I told you so we worked together doing a lot of this kind of stuff and interpreting different symbols around his art work or his cultural art Louis Gardner Jerry Jade Carver so these green elements are a jade stone we conjoined our you know cultural styles and put them both into the piece to work with people like this so Marcus is from Choctaw and then there is Raven Sky River who is also a really talented sculptor doing these naturalistic kinds of you know sea life so I get to put my design work on them and we collaborate in that way killer whale mother and calf Lisa Telford is Haida Weaver and then just kind of ending on the the music that I still do this is a group called Kuik it is means potlatch in the clinkett language actually oh it was out of order see I just had this I have too much to have too much to share this is just a little bit about some of the large scale castings that I'm doing this represented my great grandmother who had a pet grizzly bear as a child and about 2,000 pounds of glass so I made a collaboration with some squallum carvers a little bit out of order here this is actually in the bony courthouse I thought I had a picture that completed clearly I have to look at my presentation again a little closer this was the latest piece we did for the time at pledge arena so you can see that piece outside of the arena at the time we didn't know that it was going to be the kraken and so was the mascot for the team so we were kind of it was fun to hear that actually they probably knew and that's why they chose that design because we had a raven as well but they said no the octopus is going to be just fine this is in a cultural art or cultural art center in Juno, Alaska so I got this piece back into the home community this was an interior of a presentation room this looks very much like a clan house like a traditional clan house no but then there is back to the music so these are all these group this is all the music that I've come up with are collaborated with several different musicians there is about 10 piece band that we worked together I was working with this fellow named Bernie Warrell he was actually a famous person who passed away in 2016 but he was a keyboard player for parliament funkadelic and it was pretty much the main music that a lot of the rap musicians were using in the 80s and 90s Ice Cube and all these musicians sampled his sounds but I met with him he played my 50th birthday party this was a while ago and so he made an offer to collaborate with me so I got together with my clinic friends and we were using traditional songs to kind of create this undertone of music with or for and so we actually it resulted in four triple LPs we actually make vinyl vinyl albums but we're also on Spotify and all that stuff too so these performances are quite fun you know it's kind of like a three ring circus you get so many people on stage and this is Sandra she's Haida this Kachung is from he's Yupik and this is the newest member of our group Air Jazz he's a clinkit and African-American but anyway it's a lot of fun because it's my sort of another part of my artistic artistic expression I have a little video I think we have time to just flip if you guys have to split go right ahead but oh so we lost we lost a couple members too over this time Clarissa was a really skilled Chillcat Weaver she died in 2016 as well as Bernie died in 2016 so we carry on with new members let's see questions I'd be happy to address them there's one over here the raven exhibition yeah I mean the raven it started in Tacoma at the museum of glass and then it went out east and now it's the closest it might get back is towards the end of the run and maybe 2025 in Spokane potentially we're hoping it might get up to Vancouver but you know since it was in Tacoma it probably wouldn't come to Seattle yeah I mean there's a lot of at one point the art form came to a very thin threat where there wasn't many people doing it keeping it alive but then there was it sort of started coming back in the late 70s, 80s but there is such a distinction about Northwest Coast Native Art because it really does have like these elements are very recognizable they're very distinctive and it's been there's always a lot of questions about it like is it because it was so conservative as a culture that it didn't change or it's so strong a tradition that it didn't change I mean there's still something I strive to make it look just as close as I can even though it's not a traditional material of you know or what have you and so yeah those elements are very there's a real system of design that is that really makes it look like the very best pieces you can see that they're really strong you know that I mean there's a lot of you know there's a lot of chainsaw totem pole totem pole is out there too but they yeah there's something about it and it's not easy to answer all right well I did show you a lot so I'm not surprised there's no questions I like to share as much as I can but anyway thanks so much for being here I appreciate it have a good rest of your Indigenous People's Day


Oh, this is Kyrie. This is Zori. Hey, guys, how are you guys? They're good. Let's go. So I can get them on later. Seems like, you know, you were really assertive offensively from the jump, just, you know, what came into, what went into that mindset today? I just wanted to get off to a good start against a good team and do everything necessary to win. Kyrie, you were, what's today? On Wednesday, you were kind of big on being easy on expectations for teachers, just giving us layoffs and everything, but, you know, 17 minutes, 10 points. What did you make of his first game with you guys? I was really excited for him. Like I said the other night, just him doing all the little things, getting back, you know, the two years. Just really happy for him and proud of him. It is, you can't take it for granted when you take two years to come back to a game that you love or a craft that you love. Kyrie. Kyrie, you guys have now won four in a row and seven at the last nine. Just wondering, just wondering. Yeah, four in a row. This is my press conference, isn't it? It's wild and great, yeah, yeah. Four in a row, seven at the last nine. Just what's changed in this team? Just playing with a lot more confidence. Everybody's accepting their role and I think we're just catching a good rhythm right now. So we just want to keep it going. From that point when you guys kind of blew it open with that 15-0 run, I mean, obviously you guys were going on both sides of the ball, but I mean, what was the key there, particularly defensively in that run? Yeah, it starts on the defensive end for us. We said that in the beginning of the season and when we're clicking on all singles like that on the defensive end, it makes the game and the night a lot easier. I feel like we had control of the game since the first quarter and we were able to play the game the right way. I feel like we gave up a lot of opportunities, open looks, we were just being too passive, but I'd rather that at times than us getting into any selfish play. So we covered for each other on the defensive end, we did all the little things and offensively, we made enough shots to get the W. Kerry, you mentioned how happy everybody is for TJ, given what he's been through. What do you think that means for him to clear this hurdle of playing again and being at the highest level and knowing that he can do it? I mean, it's hard not to feel for anybody like that. You know, it is a similar situation that we went through with Kev when he tore his Achilles and we just had to be there for him and just support him on the off days and some good days and bad days when you're rehabbing. So, you know, we just feel good. We really empathize with not only just TJ, but people around the world that deal with, you know, crisis or injuries like that and they're coming back and they love what they do. And when you see TJ come in today, I pray that he's all smiles because he deserves it. Two years not playing something you love or you're not being able to work at the highest level and you're watching everybody come to you to get better. You know, I'm pretty sure he had that itch. So I'm glad that he got out the way and he could do it in Brooklyn. The Raptors started to catch up in the last quarter. What was happening then and how do you keep the energy for the Celtics the next game? Well, we don't want the end of the game similar like we had today. Turned into a little bit of all-star game at the end, you know, just a lot of easy baskets that Toronto was getting and just for us to be a good team, we just got to play the full 48 minutes. So we know Toronto was going to make a run eventually but just got to be in our way a little bit more.


Okay, it looks like we should be starting, so good luck. Thank you. So, I hope all of you know by now that Qt6 is a thing. It was released in the end of 2020, so that year did bring some positive things, at least for us. And if you follow the history of KDE, you know that a new major Qt version has always meant a new major iteration of the libraries and software that underpins all of KDE software. And this time is not expected to be any different. This is both a very challenging and an exciting time.  But it's also an opportunity to do things better and do this kind of change that we usually can't do because of some kind of compatibility promise. So, in this talk, I don't actually want to talk about Qt6 very much. Instead of I want that, I want to focus on what's coming on the frameworks and libraries side on our stuff. And in particular, I want to talk about what has happened so far in terms of effort towards a KDE framework 6. I want to talk about all the things that we are planning to do or we are expecting to be done. And I want to focus on some of the underlying goals and design decisions that were made. So my primary goal is that you as an application developer are not caught by surprise when some changes are made. And I want you all to be aware of or roughly aware of what's coming so that you're aware of and can help us actually do it. So the whole effort towards KDE framework 6 started even way before Qt6 was officially a thing. The first time we really talked about it was at Academy 2019 in Milan back then where we like still physically met in a room for Academy. Sounds weird right now. And there we had a framework 6 both. It wasn't a Monday morning, I think 9am after the social event in the evening. So if Qt6 turns out to be a mess, that's why. And at that meeting, we collected some rough design ideas and goals and things that we want to get done for framework 6. But the most important takeaway message from that was we need a sprint to talk all about that. And a sprint we had. In November 2019, some of us met in Berlin for a weekend long sprint about all things Kf6. Now, if you take a closer look at this picture, you will find one person missing that you would very much expect to be at a framework sprint. And that's David Ford. But for some reason, he wasn't able to come to Berlin at that time. So he made a virtual appearance here depicted inside this laptop. We all find that quite peculiar at the time. Little did we know that just a few months later, we would all attend sprints that way. So I guess that's just another example of KDE being ahead of the time. At this print, we talked about design goals and design ideas and principles that we want to apply for this transition. And I'm going to highlight the most important ones. First of all, Qt itself promises that the migration from Qt5 to Qt6 will be a rather smooth one. Not without, completely without a pain, but manageable. And we want to achieve the same. We don't want disruption. We want evolution instead of revolution. And we agreed on a general procedure for making breaking API changes. So if you want to change an API in a breaking way, you should try to introduce the replacement API right now during the lifetime of KF5. Then we start porting all the users of that old API we want to remove to the replacement. And only once all of the significant users are ported, or at least an effort has been made to prove that porting is feasible and that we don't miss any important use case, then we deprecate the old API. And when we are branching for KDE Framework 6, then all things that are marked as deprecated are removed. So we do that because we want to avoid that we as frameworks developers in our ivory tower make some arbitrary decision like, oh, we don't like that API. That's weird. Just deprecate it and get rid of it. But two years from now, some application developer wants to port their application to Framework 6 and they realize, oh, this thing is gone and there's no proper replacement for my use case. So to avoid that, we agreed on this basic principle. That means for you as an application developer, if your project gives you a deprecation warning for something huge or KF5 during the build, then go fix it. Because once you're starting to port to Qt 6 and KF6, this API will be gone. This is your warning. And we try to keep the amount of breakage that cannot be ported ahead of time and can only be addressed while actually porting from 5 to 6 as minimal as possible. But of course, there might be some cases where this is not possible. So we probably can't completely avoid it, but we want to very much keep it minimal. Then of course, we want our APIs to be better. But what does better mean in this context? Sometimes we have API in our frameworks where Qt or DC++ standard library actually has a better replacement. And we want to make use of that where it makes sense and try to remove our own API where it makes sense. Because often the upstream API is equally as good or even better and we want to, of course, use the better thing. And we want to get rid of duplicated things where possible. Because we also try to avoid duplication in our own APIs because duplication makes it harder to maintain. It makes it harder to document. It makes it harder to test. It's confusing. You don't know which one to use and which case. And wherever it makes sense, we try to converge to a single unified API for things instead of duplicated things. Currently frameworks is built on top of C++11. But C++11 has evolved quite a bit since then. Qt6 itself will require C++17. So at least at that point, we need that for our apps as well. But a lot of KDE software actually makes use of C++17 now. And just today, we ported frameworks itself to build with C++17. So C++17 brings, amongst other things, some nice vocabulary types like, for example, is to the optional that help to make better APIs by making them more descriptive, more semantic, and generally easier to understand and use. And we want to make use of that because we want nice APIs. Then the transition is, of course, also the time to address all of those to do KF6 comments that are littered across the code base to fix up all those little API things that we can't fix right now because of strong API stability guarantees. And that's just something that someone dedicated needs to do. And we also want to remove some of the stuff that is not used at all or very rarely used because unused code is untested code and that means it's broken code. And it just increases the overall maintenance burden so we want to remove stuff where it makes sense. Then what we also want as a design goal is a better separation between parts that are Qt Widgets specific, between parts that are Qt Quick specific and stuff that is shared between the two of them. Because right now a lot of our APIs use types from Qt Widgets without actually really needing to. And by doing that, we want to improve the QML compatibility of our frameworks because currently we have some functionality, for example, spell checking via Sonnet that works great for Qt Widgets applications but not for Qt Quick applications. And since the trend goes very much towards writing new software to Qt Quick, we of course want our nice frameworks to work there as well. A common example of this is using a Qt Widget pointer to represent a window that works but it's tied to Qt Widgets. We actually have a common base class that is in Qt GUI and thus works with Qt Widgets and Qt Quick that is Q Window. And by porting stuff from taking a Q Widget pointer to using a Q Window pointer, we improve things. Then what we also want to avoid is having a Qt Quick application and then somewhere, for example, in a file operation an error occurs and KO pops up a Wishit-based dialogue to inform the user that something has gone wrong. That does not look particularly nice, especially it looks really alien on Android. So in order to improve that, we want to achieve a better logic and UI separation so we can plug different UI implementations on top of the same logic. And a very good reason to avoid a Qt Widgets dependency in your Qt Quick application is that it saves your binary size. The Qt Widgets library is something like 5 megabytes in size and if your Android APK is 5 megabytes smaller, that's pretty nice. What we also want to do is reduce the dependencies between our frameworks. What you see on the screen is the dependency graph of KO and the fact that you probably can't really read this graph kind of proves what I'm talking about. We hope that by reducing the dependencies between the frameworks we make things a bit easier to deploy because not all dependencies are easily deployable on all platforms and automating a lot of dependencies that depend on each other is not that easy as it is with just a handful of dependencies with no dependencies themselves. It saves installation size, which is kind of not that much of an issue on the Linux desktop. It can become an issue in embedded deployment. And by reducing the dependency tree, we hope that we make frameworks more attractive for outside users because right now what we often hear is, oh, I don't want this because it drags half of KDE with it, which is of course bullshit, but it's an impression that sticks around. Then we want a better separation between interfaces and implementations. Yes, some frameworks mix the two of them. For example, we have password storage via KWallet. KWallet is both an implementation of a password storage system and an API for applications to use it. But on GNOME, for example, GNOME has its own GNOME keyrings thing. We could use KWallet there. It works because it's just Linux, but it would be much nicer if, for example, Dolphin was running on GNOME, all the passwords would be stored in GNOME keyring. On Windows and Mac OS and Android, KWallet does not really work at all. All of those platforms have some form of native password storage system which we want to use there. It would be nice if we had a single API that applications can use that would then transparently use whatever platform backend is suited best. A similar story is sharing things via purpose. Purpose provides an implementation of shared as file or shared as URL with, for example, NextCloud or KD Connect or some other application. On Linux, that works nice. On Android, the Android system has its own sharing implementation provided by the system which we want to use when running on Android. And here again, it would be much nicer if we had an interface API that allows us to use any of these implementations without actually worrying about it. And also, same story with file indexing, which on Plasma is done by Balu. On GNOME, it's done via GNOME Tracker. Other platforms probably have their own implementations on it of it. And we again want a simple interface to use all of them without needing to worry about them. Somewhat tying into this, we want better cross-platform support for our frameworks because Qt is cross-platform itself. KDE software originally was very Linux-specific but we got a lot better in that regard and lots of our applications do work on other platforms and that's something we want to encourage developers to do. But some of our frameworks could help more with that. First of all, we want this kind of interface and implementation separation that I talked about earlier before. Sometimes we have this separation but an implementation for a specific platform is missing. For example, KeyNotifications does a pretty great job at that because it supports Linux, it supports Android, it supports Windows, it supports macOS but, for example, it does not support iOS. So adding an iOS backend would make KeyNotifications a very attractive thing to use for Qt application developers. Then, as I mentioned, some dependencies are hard or impossible to deploy on some platforms. A common example is D-Bus, which we use for a lot of things on Linux but on Windows and Mac it only kind of works and usually doesn't make sense. On Android it just doesn't work at all. But some of our frameworks use D-Bus in their APIs or have it as a dependency so we want to try to avoid as much as possible to pull in as a dependency on Windows or Android and macOS. That makes it easier to deploy and avoid some failure cases. Similar story with X11 and Wayland which we use directly in some of our frameworks like KeyWindows system. And what we also try to do is identify recurring problems that we have not yet solved in Qt or in KF5 and add new APIs to solve those problems. One thing that comes to my mind is that in a couple of applications we have implementations for inhibiting screen locking and screen time out for various different platforms and it would be very nice to have a single framework to do that so we have a nice cross-platform API. That's not really related to KF6 though, we can add that API anytime we like. Then it's also time to retire some of the frameworks that have served us well in the past but are not really relevant anymore either because they model deprecated concepts built on deprecated APIs or are just not generally useful anymore. First thing that comes to mind is KDE-LIB4 support which was only ever meant to be a porting aid from Qt4 to Qt5 but it's about time we get done with that so there's no need for KDE-LIB4 support anymore then KHTML has served us amazingly well in the past so amazingly that other people picked it up and turned it into something else which ironically we tend to use right now which is Qt Web Engine. Similar story with KDE WebKit and KJS and KJS Embed so they are generally not used anymore we even ported Conqueror away from KHTML so it's time to retire those. Similar story with Cross there's a better replacement for scripting which is QJS Engine and Cross is not really used by much anymore so it's probably time to retire that as well. Media Player and KXML RPC Client were only ever used by two applications for each and those are obsolete as well so since nothing actively maintained use them and nobody maintains them we just should sunset them and then there's KDE in it which is an attempt to speed up application launch times by doing some clever things unfortunately it turned out that in a lot of cases we don't actually make use of them so we did some investigations and some profiling and it turns out these days it's not really useful at all and doesn't really provide an improvement so it should go as well. Then once we had established these design principles we split up in some smaller groups and made a list of all the frameworks and distributed them across the groups and then each group looked at some of the frameworks and evaluated how well they fit the goal and we made some notes on them some action items which we then discussed in a logic group and what we ended up with is a nice big fabricator work board you can find it on that link or search for KF6 it currently contains 384 tasks some of them done, some of them not some of them are more meta tasks or design goals some of them are very actionable some of them need to wait through the KF6 branching a lot of them can be done now so I would like to encourage everyone here to go have a look at that work board and pick up some tasks and help us get them done because the work we're doing right now will shape the future of our software for the foreseeable future so that work is hugely important we also agreed back then on the first sprint that we would like to have a follow-up sprint something like six months later for obvious reasons that did not happen and it was not until earlier this year that we managed to have a follow-up sprint completely virtual of course but that does not mean that nothing has happened in between because a lot of people did what I just encouraged you to they went to the work board, picked up some tasks got them done, discussed more, refined tasks split them out, added new ideas and it was pretty productive and at the second sprint we got together to discuss some of the open questions some of the things that needed input for more people and just refine some of the tasks to be more precise and more actionable and we also agreed that we would like to have some kind of regular meeting to talk about frameworks things so currently every Saturday at 1pm UTC we meet on bit blue button to go over some of the open tasks for an hour and discuss some things where people got stuck and need help or input or discuss questions around that so if you're interested in framework 6 then come join us on a Saturday so now I want to present some of the highlights of the technical aspects that we agreed on or already did this is by no means an exhaustive list of things I just picked some of the things that I consider the most important or most impactful first of all there is the case service type trader class which manages services a service can be a couple of different things it can be an application, it can be a plugin it can be a k part which is mostly just a special case of a plugin it can be a kconfig module which again is mostly a special case of a plugin it can be pretty much anything that is described by a desktop file and case service type trader manages a global database of all the available services you can use it to query that database it's done via some specialized trader language and you can write queries like give me all of the applications that are installed give me the preferred image viewer give me all of the applications that can handle png files give me vk part preferred to open pdf files give me all the plugins for kd connect but as it turns out using that trader language is not very intuitive and people would rather much write C++ codes than some domain specific language because it's much easier to approach and understand and mixing things together that are not really the same like applications and plugins that doesn't really make sense since a couple of years we actually have a new way of querying and loading plugins which is the kpluginloader and kpluginmetadata api and kcore addons and over the years a lot of the plugin stuff was poured to use that and so we agreed that we want to use for all of the plugin loading applications to this new approach then we also got around to have a better replacement for querying applications which is kapplication trader which is pretty much like kserverstep trader except only for applications and instead of a domain specific language we use a C++ function to do arbitrary filtering and you can use that to answer questions like what's the preferred image viewer or give me all the applications that can open PDF files and for kparts we came up with a new kpartloader which is very similar to the application trader just for kparts so you can tell it give me an instance of a kpart that can handle PDF files overall pretty much all of the use cases for kserverstep trader had better replacements so it's natural to just remove the whole thing another framework that is expected to have larger changes is kicon themes in particular we want to remove the kiconloader usage because there is a better upstream API in Qt which is qicon from theme qiconloader and qicon from theme do is you give it an icon name and what you can return is a qicon or a PIXMAP that corresponds to the icon you requested and unfortunately kiconloader has some troubles or it's not that intuitive to use for high DPI scenarios so just by porting from the KDE API to the Qt API there are a lot of high DPI rendering issues which of course is nice then I've talked about kwallet and the interface implementation problem and as it turns out there's already a third party Qt library that does exactly what we need and that is Qt Keychain so what we are planning to do is to acquire Qt Keychain as a KDE framework and use that one as an interface to Kwallet which then becomes an implementation detail and as an interface to all of the other back ends I just talked about last year at academy David Four had a talk about all the new jobs in KIO where he talked about reworking K-run into a couple of new jobs which are application launcher job and command launcher job and those achieve this separation between QWitches part and non-QWitches part and this separation between logic and UI representation much better than the old K-run did so what you can do right now is plug different UI delegates in the same job so you can have a delegate that pops up a Q dialogue we created a new one that pops up a notification which for plan will use cases much nicer and you could write your own thing that integrates into your Qt Quick application and while I was researching this talk I came across an academy talk from 2019 from David Four about the new KDE framework and there he mentioned to remove K-tool invocation this time we really mean it what K-tool invocation does right now is sort of two-fold one use case for it is launching things via KDE in it but as I've mentioned earlier we actually want to remove KDE in it so that API isn't really useful anymore and we should use one of those launcher jobs that I've talked about earlier the other use case is stuff like launching a mail client launching the help center and to do that we are probably going to add some new API on top of the aforementioned launcher jobs so they have a main specific interface and then use the common mechanism to actually launch the job and in order to improve the QML support of the frameworks we want to break up the existing K-declared framework because it's purpose is again a bit two-fold it contains first of all some generally useful Qt Quick and QML related classes like for example all the QML KCMs have a common base class there and it also contains a couple of QML bindings for other frameworks and it turns out that due to all of this the thing depends on KAO which has this horrible dependency tree that you have seen earlier and that makes a very K-declared very not nice to use and people are scared to use it because all of the dependencies it drags in so we hope that by moving all of these frameworks bindings into the respective frameworks instead of having them all in a single framework and by reworking some of the internals to remove the dependency tree a lot and make it more attractive to use and thus improve the QML support of the overall frameworks product again this most by no means an exhaustive list there's still a lot of it going on have a look at our work board join us on for example KDE-Devil to talk about anything you want to talk about and I'm not the end do you have any questions for me? thank you very much Nikolas for that I do see some questions already I can read them for you if you'd like how is KDE handling issues with lack of Qt multimedia until release of Qt 6.2 how will media playback be handled with planned deprecation of K-media player so the lack of Qt multimedia until Qt 6.2 is very easily avoided by just not porting anything to Qt 6 until then because right now the current plan is for Qt multimedia to be released in a couple of months and we still have a lot of work to do before we get to the point where you would actually need Qt multimedia there are still plenty of things to do before that and K-media player is not actually used by anything except one application and that one is pretty dead so there's no issue there okay good to know then someone was confused when you were talking about removing some functions with framework 6 API does it mean they will be deprecated but kept around until framework 7 or how does that work now when I say deprecate things I mean in KF 5 they will give you a deprecation warning and then when we actually get around to making a branch for framework 6 then we delete all the things so everything that's deprecated now will be gone in framework 6 okay then on making things modular is it planned to use optional dynamic library loading with graceful feature degradation if certain libraries example kf crash are not installed on the system we sort of do that already and some places we plan to use a little bit more so one example is kstandard shortcuts which currently lives in kconfig widgets which has a rather not nice dependency tree because it depends on a couple of things and it's actually one of the diverse offenders in the overall dependency tree and kstandard shortcuts and this is kconfig to read your settings from the disk so you can configure your shortcuts and what we plan to do is we take that thing and move it down to kgui addons which cannot depend on kconfig but we actually are planning to add a plugin mechanism so when you run a plasma you can write a plugin that then feeds the configuration information into the library and on non-plasma platforms this kind of configurability doesn't really exist so for example on windows there's no point in trying to read the plasma settings so there it's not an issue or we could write a window specific plugin that records something so that's a pretty neat trick that we try to apply in some places that can help okay thank you very much and still one question here that I see remaining will there be some better documentation for things like plasma applets, desktop widgets, etc in frameworks 6? that's pretty much unrelated to framework 6 because nothing is stopping us from writing better documentation now we don't need to break api to do that one nice side effect of framework 6 is that we are re-breaking some things, removing some things and making some things a bit easier to use without documentation or when replacing things we try very much to add documentation so the overall transition sort of helps in that direction but in general the question of better documentation is pretty unrelated especially when it comes to plasma things that are even more unrelated to frameworks okay so basically you can do better documentation right now and stopping us so I'm glad that I was pushing for better documentation by having higher two people to work on that because it's certainly an important thing yeah I agree okay I don't see any other questions Nicolas thank you again very much are there any other tags or buffs that you will be handed? I think there will be a kf6 buff I don't know when it will be but I trust you to find it on the wiki people can surely find it in their schedule okay thank you Nicolas


Hi, this is Alan Stein Jr., Performance Coach, Consultant, Speaker, and Author, and welcome to the Power of Positive Summit. I'm very appreciative that John gave me an opportunity to speak to you all, as John has had a profound impact on my life. As I'm sure you're aware, if you've seen his talks and read his books and followed him on social, he's an incredibly powerful influencer and leader. I'm going to share with you some thoughts on change, and the reason I want to talk about change for the Power of Positive Summit is because most people tend to think of change as negative. It's almost as if it's an automatic default button that we're all wired with.  And there's a few reasons for that that we'll dive into. But I want you to know that you control your thoughts and you control your mindset and you can choose to look at change and embrace change from a positive angle. Now when we look at change, we have to appreciate the fact that it is unavoidable. Change is happening every moment of every day. And as I like to say, you can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. There's no reason that we should be spending our mental, emotional and physical energy and currency trying to resist something that's unavoidable. Change is a part of life. And it's also important to note that the happiest, most fulfilled, most influential and best leaders that I've ever been around not only tolerate change, they embrace it. They welcome it. They search for it. And that's because they know change is the only thing that will lead to growth, development and improvement. I'm a quote nerd and have been since high school. And one of my favorite quotes is so simple yet still so profound. If nothing changes, nothing changes. Wherever you are in your life right now, it's a culmination of every decision and every choice that you've ever made. So if there's any area of your life, maybe your health and fitness, maybe your relationships, maybe your finances that you're not happy with, then clearly something needs to change.  If you don't like what you've been getting, you need to change what you've been doing. And when I dig back and try and figure out, why are most people so opposed to change? It's because as human beings, we are creatures of habit. We love our routine. And anytime we are removed from our routine or we have to change our routine, what's comfortable and familiar, there's some discomfort. And most people have been wired to believe that discomfort is bad. Well, that's the part of the equation I hope that you'll consider reframing. Discomfort is not bad. In fact, discomfort is a prerequisite to growth. It's a prerequisite to getting better in any area of your life. Now I know a lot of the cliche phrases, you know, life starts outside of your comfort zone and you have to learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable. We hear those all the time. There's a reason we hear them all the time. They're true. We have to learn how to embrace change and be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Now when it comes to change, there are three specific steps that we have to go through. One is awareness. Two is understanding. And three is reconditioning. I'm willing to bet you have an awareness that something right now in your life needs to change. Again, it could be in a specific area of your life. It could be finances or fitness or relationships, but you're probably aware of what needs to be changed. So we go right to step two, which is an understanding.  Or in many cases, what is the impact or what's at risk if you don't change. And then and only then, once you have a strong feeling of the impact, then we move on to the reconditioning, which is where we'll actually develop a new habit. Let's use health and fitness as an example as we go through the three steps. You're probably aware that you might not be eating as well as you should or that you're not working out as often or as hard as you're capable of. If that's the case, then you already have the awareness. Now what we need to do is move to step two, where we can actually tie this to some meaning. And what you need to do is you need to have an understanding of the impact of not being healthy and as fit as you're capable of is having on your life. And we can look at that at short-term and we can look at that long-term. But either way, we need to find a compelling enough reason to actually change because change is so difficult. Well, some of the short-term negative effects of not working out and of not eating a healthy diet is low energy. And if you're a parent or a business owner, you realize that energy is one of your most important currencies. So you have to have high energy. But if you really want to dig deeper, what are some of the long-term effects of not being as healthy or as well as you're capable of? Yeah, you could actually die earlier. And I don't say that to be morbid. I say that because I want you to connect that thought with things like not seeing your children or grandchildren go up or not seeing them get married or graduate high school. The whole point of the understanding is to tie the meaning to something so compelling that you'll do whatever it takes to go through the discomfort and actually change the habit. And then once you've attached that meaning, then we go to number three, which is the reconditioning and realize that the reconditioning, as I mentioned before, will cause discomfort. But you have to realize that discomfort is temporary and that discomfort is a requirement. It's not a nice to have. It's a need to have in order for you to make that change. I had a chance to meet Kevin Durant when he was 15 years old. It was after his sophomore year of high school. And after watching Kevin play for just a couple of minutes, it was clear to me that he had a very high basketball IQ. He was fundamentally sound. He played incredibly hard and he had all the talent to be a great player. But it was also clear to me that he was slight of frame and that he was going to need to get stronger and more powerful and gain body weight if he was going to be able to play at the highest level. Because that was my wheelhouse, I was a basketball performance coach at the time. I immediately reached out to him and his wonderful mom, Wanda, to see if he could come in for a workout. And at this point in time, Kevin had never touched a weight and never done any type of formalized or structured training. Well, after a few months of convincing, he finally came in. And within 30 minutes, absolutely hammered him. Kevin was on the floor. And if you know what Kevin Durant looks like, he's still fairly wiry. He's 6'10". So he was kind of coiled up like a snake on the gym floor. And his body was shaking and he was profusely sweating. And Kevin was very quiet and introverted back in high school. So he didn't really say much during the workout. So it was hard for me to gauge whether or not he liked it. And I knew that I had just thrown everything at him and that he was incredibly uncomfortable. But I still wanted to get a gauge on whether he liked the workout. So I simply asked him. And he said with all seriousness, no, I didn't. But I know this is what I need to do to get to the NBA. So when can we meet again, coach? And still to this day, I remember vividly how impressed I was with this young man understanding that one, he was going to have to make a change. But two, this change was going to come with a tremendous amount of physical, mental, and even emotional discomfort. But he was willing to make that sacrifice because of what he wanted to achieve. I realized that everything I'm saying to you right now is very basic. I'm making it sound very simple, which in theory it is. But none of this stuff is easy. Please don't think for one second that I think changing a habit or changing your routine or behavior is easy. It's not. So it's important that you know that ahead of time. This stuff is basic, but not easy. And there's a reason for that. There's lots of barriers that we have when it comes to change. So I'm going to give you a three-step process right now, how you can successfully change any behavior or habit. And that way we can start framing all of these changes as positive. First and foremost, I want you to have razor sharp focus, and I want you to pick one thing. Just one thing that you want to change. One easy exercise to help you whittle down and figure out what to change is you can make a list of things that you need to start doing to help improve a behavior or habit. And you can also make a list of things you need to stop doing, because they're a barrier to this change or this habit. And once you have this list, then you need to circle what you think would be the most impactful thing to start and the most impactful thing to stop. And once you have it down to those two, you're only going to pick one. You're going to pick the one that you believe would be most impactful in your life. And the reason you're doing that is because as human beings, we're not wired for a lot of change. We're actually wired to have hyper focus. That's one of the reasons why I love John Gordon's one word concept when it comes to New Year's resolutions. Instead of coming up with a long list of things that you want to change, just focus your entire life and all of your behavior and habits and routines around the one word. It's why John's concept is so brilliant. And there was actually some research done and this research said, and this was by John Berardi, a gentleman that started a company called Precision Nutrition and he found through an expansive study that if you focus on changing one behavior at a time with relentless commitment, you have an 85% chance of making that change. I'm not a betting guy, but I like those odds. But here's what I found remarkable. As soon as you split in half, this is through John's research. As soon as you split and try to change two behaviors at once, the percentage of success drops down to 35 or 40%. And if you're really ambitious, which I know a lot of you are, which is why you're watching this video and you try and change three things, percentage drops down to four or five percent. Clearly no one should like those odds. So it's in all of our best interests to have hyper focus and find the one thing that we want to change. Next, I want you to think of 66 days. Why 66 days? The latest research that I've read says that it takes approximately 66 consecutive days to form a new habit behavior or routine. I know there's some other research out there that says it takes 21 days to build a habit. But the best research that I found recently says it takes approximately 66 days. Clearly this will be plus or minus a few days depending on what the habit or routine is and depending on how long you've had it. But I like 66 days. One, it's easy to remember because it's kind of a weird number. But the other reason I like it, it's a finite amount of time. It's a hair over two months. You just need to be committed to your one thing for 66 straight days. And again, the research will be in your favor. And then lastly, you need to keep the spotlight on. Just like I have light shining on me right now as I'm recording this video, you need to keep the spotlight of accountability on yourself. And there's a few ways you can do this.  And you ask them, beg them, plead with them to hold you accountable and to check in with you as often as possible for the 66 days. Ask how you're doing with it. If and when you slip up, which you inevitably will, you need someone that's going to hold your backside to the fire. You need someone that's going to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Because we're not going to accept excuses. You need to stay focused on this one thing for the entire 66 days. I also recommend if you can find an unbiased third party to help hold you accountable. For many people, this is using social media. There is nothing wrong with using the peer pressure from social media to help hold you accountable. So for example, my one thing is that I'm going to go for a 30 minute walk every morning before I do anything else. Then it's okay for me to put that out on Facebook. Let people know that that's what I'm going to be doing. Because then people that don't even know you that well will try and hold you accountable. They will check in and ask and you will feel obligated to report to them and to your inner circle and let them know how everything's going. So in summary, if you're looking to make a change, let's whittle it down to one thing. Let's have relentless commitment to do that for 66 straight days. And let's tell everyone our inner circle and our outer circle so that they can keep the spotlight on us. I hope this helps and thanks again for watching. I'm so thankful to have an opportunity to share with you all and I want to treat this video. The same way I treat my keynotes and my interactive workshops. That I have an opportunity to travel the world and deliver to different companies and teams. And that's to make sure that I eliminate all fluff and that I give you tangible, practical, actionable takeaways that you can implement immediately to start to have an impact on your life. Like our positive leader, John Gordon. I do my best to use social media platforms as a way to spread information like this. So if there's ever anything I can do for you or to help you out or if you want a steady stream of additional positivity or even someone to help hold you accountable. Please follow me on all of the different major social platforms.