Month: February 2020

One of the things that our trip blessed me with was a deepened longing and appreciation for my children. I was so worn out before leaving that I know I was not appreciating them or engaging with them in the way that such magically wonderful children deserve. I love every second on Bora Bora, but I also daydreamed of my reunion with the children.

Monday was a very long day. Our overnight 8-hour flight was very hard to sleep on. I drifted in and out of sleep for almost all of it. In my semi-dream state, I had a very interesting experience. In my semi-dream state, I felt a lot of my demons and fears fill my head until I felt complete darkness and despair. I then felt the idea to be open to the idea that help and light could come, even in unexpected places, and that whereas in the past help often came from relying on what I knew, in this new phase of life, I needed to be open to the unknown, unexpected, and new for salvation. I also at one point cuddled up next to Lily and felt my demons dissipate and I understood that she is a key source of light in my life, and a powerful force for dispelling darkness. By the end of my rest, I felt some life, and light and hope. It was all a very interesting and meaningful journey.

In L.A., we had a long layover. Then we had a short-flight home and my dad and Suzanne picked us up. It was so nice to see them. They were so loving and cheerful, and sweet. It was so wonderful to be received back into Utah by them.

Lily and I got crown-burger and then drove home. When we got home, all the kids were in bed, but it was so wonderful to see Georgia who is such a love in our lives. Lily and I sneaked up to the girls room to see if by chance they were still awake and they weren’t, but I sneaked a kiss for each of them. It was so nice to see our children again.

It was so good to be home. I also grabbed this photo to show just how bad my sunburn really was:

Sunday was our last day in Bora Bora. After a delicious breakfast, we made our way to the lovely beach to rest and read. Here are some photos of the beach we enjoyed so much.

On the beach I read Get out of Your Mind and Into Your Life. It’s an amazing self-help book about acceptance commitment therapy. It heavily uses mindfulness too. The basic premise is that rather than fighting the wars of anxiety in our head, we can learn to accept those wars and let them rage when they rage, but have our focus not on the war in our minds, but on living a values driven life. It was very timely since on the last day of the trip, my demons really came out to play and my anxiety was extremely bad. Still, I had a marvelous day and in addition to resting and reading, I had a nice snorkel swim at the resort.

Also, Lily read and rested on the beach. I think she read about 3 books end to end, and worked on or finished three other books. Some of the books she worked on were:

• A Biography of Brigham Young
• A Stable Genius, a book about Trump’s presidency so far in the whitehouse
• How to change your mind, a book about Psychedelics and mushrooms by Michael Pollen
• A book about Harvey Weinstein written by the whistle-blower who got him finally exposed

I realized I hadn’t taken many pictures in the second half of our trip, so I got some more pictures just to help us remember how beautiful Bora Bora is.

Bora Bora was such a beautiful trip. Just before our boat-ride out, we chatted with one of the managers at Le Meridian. He changes locations with Marriott every two years, and he affirmed to us how special Bora Bora is, even compared to the other exotic places he’s been stationed. This was a once in a lifetime trip, must needed rest and processing, and cherished time with my wonderful wife. I thank God, Team Spartacus, Qualtrics and all those who support me (especially Lily and the rest of my family) for making this all possible. My biggest hope in light of this trip is to qualify again next year for Costa Rica and to have at least one of the hard working members of my team and his/her guest to join me and Lily.

Here is a video Google photos compiled of our amazing trip.

After catching the boat to the airport, we started our 24 hours or so of travel. We caught a 7:20 flight to Tahiti, and then killed 3 or so hours at the airport while waiting for the overnight flight.

Today was our last full day in Bora Bora. Like usual, we worked out and then got ready for the day and had breakfast. In the morning, I did more snorkeling and Lily contemplated, rested and read on the beach. She has read SO MANY BOOKS on this trip, and I’ll make a full list of all of them in Monday’s blog.

In the afternoon, Lily got a reflexology massage and then we both got another full-body massage. It was so wonderful!

At night we went to the Qualtrics closing dinner. Here is a picture of Lily in her new sun glasses (which I love!) on the boat-ride over:

At dinner, I set next to Bryce Winklman and his wife and Lily sat next to Greg and Amy. They were all so wonderful. I had a good time talking to Bryce about work things and Lily and I laughed as Greg made hilarious jokes about Boston.

After dinner, I watched some fire-dancers while Lily relaxed and then we both sat on the dock waiting four our boat while talking to John Johnson, Brenda, Tim and Jess, and Richard and Jill. That was a nice memory. We’ve had so many wonderful interactions with people on this trip, and certainly deepened friendships and sweetened associations will come out of it.

As usual, we started our day with a workout, and then had breakfast. Breakfast is always my favorite meal at these all-inclusive resorts. My favorite breakfast items are:

• Yogurt bar with dozens of toppings
• Omlettes
• Oatmeal with chocolate and other topings
• Nutella and berry crepes
• Tons and tons of fresh fruit.

After breakfast, Lily and I went back to our room and had a massage. IT WAS AMAZING! One of my favorite parts of the massage was that they positioned us over the window in the floor of our room so that we could stare at the ocean while we were getting our massage. It was wonderful.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing and reading on the beach and I snorkeled in the resort’s lagoon pond and saw fun fish.

On the beach, I finished the book, Wallet Allocation Rule. One of the authors was Luke Williams who works at Qualtrics.

The basic premise of the book is that companies often believe that the way they will get more market-share is to increase their customer satisfaction. Yet there really is no relationship between customer satisfaction and market share, or if there is, there is a negative one, because as a company gets bigger, it must serve a more diverse customer base and therefore it cannot be as tailored to each individual customer, and also companies with the most market-share are often busier, making for a poorer customer experience. The book points out that many of the biggest companies, McDonalds, Walmart etc, don’t have the highest customer satisfaction, whereas smaller companies often have much higher satisfaction (for example, K-Mart had amazing satisfaction right before going into bankruptcy). This is also because satisfaction only asks customers to rate the experiences the company offers them (a small company has fewer experiences to focus on nailing), but it does not ask customers to consider what they would like that company to offer that it doesn’t yet currently offer.

This is where the Wallet Allocation Rule comes in. The Wallet Allocation Rule says that focusing on Satisfaction in a vacuum is almost meaningless. Instead, companies should focus on their relative satisfaction compared to the other companies that their customers are spending money with. The book points out that companies obsess over retention, but that is the wrong metric to focus on. It’s not so much if your customer will continue to shop at your store as it is, what can your store do to get the customer to start spending more at your store and less at other stores. To find that out, you need to survey customers, ask them what competitors they use, ask them to rank you against the competing companies, and then ask them what drives their decisions to shop elsewhere. Then, you can start to understand what things you con implement to make it so your customers don’t choose to go elsewhere as much, and this will increase your share of wallet with your customers, and thus your marketshare. This, the book states, and I agree, is a much more effective way to gain market-share than just by focusing on increasing your customer satisfaction in a vacuum

When we did Facetime with our children today, they lamented the fact that we were not with them on Valentine’s day because we’ve made it fun for them in the past. We miss our children, and are very excited to see them!

We had dinner at the health food restaurant again. Our favorite waiter, Elia, gave us a bottle of honey from his grandfather. We also learned that Elia was losing his job, and he felt it was because he dressed like a woman and was gay, and management was not accepting of him. We felt the Elia did a wonderful job serving and we were sad for him, however, we were happy to learn he found a housekeeping job at another resort that he thought would be more accepting. I hope WE ALL can be more accepting of beautiful people like Elia. He was one of the bright spots of our trip, and it was so thoughtful of him to bring us a jar of honey.

Thursday in Bora Bora was another day in paradise. Lily loved looking at the trees and the white birds that were in them. Here is a video that captures her view.

Today I went on the shark tour. Lily stayed on the beach and read.

The shark tour was amazing. I didn’t have my camera with me, but Stacey Creer took photos and a video that are below (Thank you a million Stacey!):

The shark tour was amazing. We all loaded in a boat. I chatted mostly with Mark, Stacey and Jensen. The tour guide was hilarious. When we asked him what the sharks we were going to swim with ate, he told us, “white people.”

Here are two videos of him playing a traditional 8 string Ukelele:

Video 1

Video 2

The first stop was thrilling. We swam with manta rays and black-tip sharks that were 5 to 6 feet long.

The second stop was my favorite. We stopped at a choral reef that had hundreds if not thousands of beautiful tropical fish. The boat guide also jumped down and coaxed out an eel for me to see.

Between the second and third stop, I had a wave of pressure come over me to go to the bathroom. I don’t know what the issue was (maybe it was the two cans of juice I had in the boat), but I had to go so bad that it hurt to sit down and I wanted to cry. I was almost seriously considering jumping out of the boat while the boat was going because the next stop was 15 minutes away. Finally I made it to the next stop and saw more sharks and thoroughly relieved myself.

Stop three had lime sharks. I thought they were 11-12 feet long, but the tour guide said 708 feet I think, so I would trust him. It was amazing to swim with such beautiful and intimidating creatures.

We did one final stop where we just swam in the most beautiful, shallow water, ate grapefruit, coconut and coconut bread and listed to our tour guide, and a fellow boat’s guide play ukuleles and sing beautiful songs.

All in all, it was such a great time.

I got super burnt on the tour. Even though I concentrated on staying in the shade while on the boat, the total of one hour or so that I spent in the water was enough to completely fry me. I sprayed some sunscreen on my back, but it only got in spots, so where it didn’t get burned very badly. I should have gotten someone to help me!

Afterwords Lily and I went to dinner and Stacey Creer got a picture of us.

Also, here is a pretty picture at dusk of our Bora Bora island and it’s peak.

At night, Lily and I tried to meditate, but I broken into a chill and started shaking. We thought it was due to my sunburn. Lily said whenever my back got close to her at night, it was like a heater because it was so hot from the burn.

We started today just like we started yesterday with a hearty workout. I backed mine off a little because of how tired I was feeling, but Lily did both a hard elliptical workout and a rowing workout. She really went for it.

As mentioned, I felt tired this morning and was kindof grumpy, but we had a pleasant time at breakfast talking to Eric and Sarah, a couple from Michigan we met on the boat-ride over, who invited us to join them for breakfast. Eric works at Ford and we all covered a lot of topics including cars and trucks :). Here is a picture of the fish swimming right under/next to us at breakfast. They gave us fish food to give them and that was a very fun simple pleasure. Also, I’ll note the breakfasts here have been amazing. I love all the fresh fruit especially.

After breakfast, I cured my grumpiness by resting a solid hour on the beach until I felt better and happier. I still feel a lot of deep recovering happening and I’m so grateful for every day I get to be here with Lily.

After resting, I finished my book, Falling Upward, by Richard Rhor. It is literally one of the best books I have read in my entire life and it has been a sure stepping stone in my own spiritual journey. Below is a summary of my key takeaways from the book:

In short, Falling Upward describes the fall from the garden of Eden that many people have in their midlife. This is the journey from the first half of life (governed by rules, achievement orientation, ego and identity building etc ) to the second half of life (filled with uncertainty, peace, freedom, sorrow, joy, freedom, and wisdom). He suggests that most people will not take a journey willingly into their second half of life because of how scary and painful it is, so most people have to fall into it through a crisis, and that is a very fortunate crisis indeed because people might never fully mature spiritually if they get stuck in their first half of life (never become true Elders, as Richard Rhor puts it). My fortunate crisis was Lily leaving the church, and the launch of my own entrance into ambiguity and questioning. This book gives assurances, principles, and guidelines for entering the second half of life. Some of my favorite takeaways are:

• Dualisting or black-and-white thinking only belongs in the first half of life.
• In the second half of life you are able to embrace and hold life’s complexities and paradoxes with with love and grace and find creative tension and not anxiety or the need to eliminate people or things that complicate your world view.
• The second half of life can be lonely, but you will feel free and filled in solitude as you find and feel comfortable in your true self.
• Our first life builds up our illusion identity which is useful to give ourselves a container, but in the second half of life we find our true identity and the love and Gaze of God which can fill our container, expand our minds and guide our actions.
• The first half of life is about my dance, the second half of life is in finding joy in joining the general dance regardless of my role. It is about giving, not receiving. It is about my place in the fabric, not being a special thread.

I actually feel like I’m butchering a lot of the teachings, but the book truly spoke to me.

After finishing the book, Lily and I had a wonderful lunch and then headed back to our room to cool off. On the way, Lily wanted me to capture just how glorious and green the water is:

Back at our hotel room, I blogged for a couple of hours while Lily read and then we caught a boat to go to the St. Regis for the Q-club dinner reception.

It was a wonderful time. We had great a conversation with Benji and Aubrey Wohan about schooling. We also talked to Lucas and Kim and had a really good time talking to Mark and Stacey Creer and learned that we were in the Evanston ward at the same time. We talked to many other wonderful people and had a great time and enjoyed very good food. Now it’s time to get some rest so I can get up in time for the shark tour tomorrow.

Oh, also I won a gopro from the raffle! Thanks God!

When Told Lily about how much I loved my workout, she had the vision for us to wake up early and exercise today. It’s so fun because we can really feel like we are catching the day when we are working out at 7:00 AM, but the honest truth is that it was 10:00 Utah time. Still, I’ll take those positive feelings of accomplishment!

We were stopped in our tracks right as we left our room to work out because there was a massive downpour of rain. Amazingly, it only lasted 5 minutes and then we got to see a glorious double rainbow. Yes, “Welcome to magical Bora Bora” the sky seemed to say to us.

Also, here is a picture of the hotel room where we stayed. Yes, it is actually on-top of poles that are holding it over the water.

As if that wasn’t amazing enough of a water effect, we have a window in our floor so that we can gaze at the beautiful ocean water while comfortably sitting in our room.

It’s hard to describe the healing, relaxing and awe-inspiring feeling I get when I get out of bed and look at the ocean through my floor. I feel engulfed in paradisaical beauty.

After working out, Lily and I cooled off with a good swim with our goggles right off of our back porch. Our back porch actually has a ladder down into the water for swimming! We noticed irritation marks on our skin afterwords and feared they were from bed-bugs, but we were assured by hotel staff that there is a type of microscopic algae in the water that commonly causes skin to react in that way, so we were much relieved.

After swimming and having breakfast, Lily and I chilled on the beach. I felt like the wheels were falling off the cart physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally as I headed into this vacation so I was looking forward to relaxing hard. And so I did:

Thank you Lord for this healing.

Lily also was so ready for some relaxation after all of her work and toil at home and life with 4 beautiful active children. Except unlike me, Lily finds reading relaxing, so that is how she spent most of her time. Right now she is reading a book talking about all the books in the Old and New Testament that were forged and/or not by the authors that they are claiming to have. She’s so smart!

Here are some additional scenes from the beach we relaxed at:

Also, while lounging we kept having magical white birds flying around us. The whole scene was so pretty. The mountain, the water, the birds. It just was so beautiful.

After lunch, we returned to our favorite spot, that platform out in the water. This time, we planned to stay for two full hours so that we could see the sunset. I have beautiful memories of being in that paradisaical spot with my gorgeous sweetheart. The sunset and cloud-scape was wonderful. It was all so delicious.

The other day Lily and I were talking with the family about quirky habits or obsessions. Things we are strangely obsessed with, things that really make us tick in unusual ways. For example. Lily is completely obsessed, not only with ear wax, but the removal of said wax. She has this primal, passionate instinct that will compel her to have children lie on her lap while she scoops the turds out of their ears and marvels at the sizes and shapes of things she extracts (occasionally interrupted by yelps of agony). I felt perplexed in this conversation as my mind scanned myself and couldn’t think of anything I’m unusually obsessed with….except for Lily. I concluded that she is my bizarre obsession. 🙂 On that note, apologies to anyone who is not quite as obsessed with Lily as I am for all of the repetitive pictures of her below. I could not pick a favorite!

After watching the sunset, we went to a wonderful health restaurant with a delightful waitress named Elia who was new, and tried so hard to be a great waitress and really did a good job. We loved talking to her and learning about life in Bora Bora for the natives.

After the restaurant, we walked home and got a good chuckle out of Lily’s activity monitor. We hit it very hard in the morning, and then definitely took it quite easy the rest of the day 🙂

I’m happy to report that the long flight from L.A. to Tahiti was much smoother of a ride and Lily didn’t even get sick. Once arriving in Tahiti, we quickly transferred to another equally smooth flight on which Lily did not get sick. Yay!

We arrived in Bora Bora around 8:30 AM Bora Bora time (3 hours behind Utah). I have to say that everything from top to bottom was magical upon arrival.

The airport is on an island, so we took a five minute boat ride to the resort. Once arriving at the resort, Lily changed into her swimwear and we lounged by the pool until our room was ready. This is a view near the reception desk and the pool where we lounged.

Once our room was ready, we showered and then grabbed some lunch. Below is our view from our lunch spot. That mountain in the background is the island of Bora Bora where the locals live (about 1,000 people). Many of them work at the Le Meridian resort and take a boat to and from work every day. There is almost always a cloud dancing on our around that mountain. You will also notice the unbelievable color of greenish light-blue that the water is here. More of those pictures to come!

Lily absolutely loved her fish and kept talking about it.

I also absolutely loved my Nicoise salad with fresh tuna in it.

After lunch we spent time at a beautiful platform in the water. Lily had a theory that she could use the sun’s rays to burn out her sinus infection. We think it worked, and she also got a ton of sun. Luckily her burn turns to tan quite quickly. I stayed fairly covered and didn’t burn much and enjoyed lounging in such a beautiful environment.

All in all the whole first day felt so magical. Lily and I have never been anywhere so beautiful or so remote. Everywhere we look is an explosion of beauty and serenity. We agreed at the end of the day that if we had to fly home even just after then ten hours of being in Bora Bora, all the travel would have been worth it. We felt so thrilled and delighted that we had seven days to look forward to ahead of us.

I then went to exercise to get out my tension after all the sitting in planes and Lily relaxed back at the place. It was a glorious start to a much needed vacation, and I felt and continue to feel so grateful to come and heal from my stresses in this way with my favorite person.

I planned on taking the kids to church, but Lily preferred we all stay home and be together as a family before leaving on our trip to Bora Bora. That sounded good, so I agreed, and as it turned out, we needed every second to finish packing, clean the house, and all be together for only last time before the trip.

Lexi, our Nanny who we found on Care.com, arrived at 1:00 and we said our final goodbyes by 1:30. Since the day before, I had been trying to help Clarissa process what was happening by saying things like, “Clarissa, we are going to go away. And then we will come back.” It has been my hope that this trip will not be hard or traumatic on her!

Lily and I then drove to Salt Lake to my dad and Suzanne’s house so they could take us to the airport and let us park our car at their place. We were surprised to learn that my dad was not able to drive us to the airport with Suzanne because of some urinary tract infection issues he was having that put him in the hospital. He was in so much pain that he had an ambulance come pick him up. The infection was caused in part by his previous surgeries this year. We were happy to learn that he was doing better in the hospital and would be released shortly.

Suzanne drove us and we had a great time talking with her. We talked about a lot of things, including politics, which is an area we all agree on quite well. Suzanne is a lovely lovely soul and it is always nice spending time with her.

Once at the airport, Lily and I started our near 24 hours of travel. We first flew to L.A. and the flight was bumpy and Lily got very sick. On the flight, I watched Ad Astra the movie, and loved it. The movie is about a crazy scientist who devotes his life to finding extra-terrestrial life, and when he doesn’t, he goes crazy, but his son is able to love him anyway and walk away with the conclusion that our relationships on earth are all we have and all there is that matters, and so he goes back to earth and throws himself into the relationships that matter to him.

We had a five hour or so layover in L.A. I think it was during that time that I finished my book, Never Split the Difference. Lily was reading her memoir book about a woman who found herself in witchcraft (the positive love-based kind). Here is are some brief thoughts on Never Split the Difference:

Never Split the Difference is one of the best business books I have ever read. The logic in it is not always complete, but that is because the book is almost completely derived from the author’s emotional intelligence which he often finds hard to articulate. But the wisdom and power in that book are profound. His entire premise is that negotiating is not a rational exercise between two actors that could be modeled by economic preference functions. He negotiated with Terrorists and to highlight his point in an extreme way, he said, “if you think negotiation is a rational process, try negotiating with someone who thinks he is the savior of the world.” His point is that all negotiations and non-rational and that people will succeed most in them as they approach them emotionally first. For example, he stresses using a playful disarming voice, using your smooth night DJ voice when you need to be assertive, and say things with a down accent when you communicate a non-negotiable. His biggest tactic, the one he wants to be his biggest takeaway, is mirroring. When someone says something to you, you reflect it back to that person, and wait in silence. That discomfort of silence will almost force the person to elaborate and expand on what they said, which in a best case scenario will reveal a black swan (or underlying reason or motive for the persons behavior that can help you understand that person and move forward in the best way in the negotiation). For example someone could say, “That price is way too high, I just don’t have the money.” Simply take the last few words of the phrase and repeat back, “You don’t have the money?”. Then pause silently. Eventually the person will start elaborating. “Yeah, I don’t. I’m in debt, and I really need that car, but it’s just not a price I can pay. Maybe if there were financing, or creative payment terms, I could find a way, but I can’t pay that much cash up-front. I have a big check on the way, so if full-payment could be delayed three months, I could maybe even do that, but that is the exact car I’ve been looking for, and I just wrecked my other one, so I need to buy that one, but that price won’t work for me.” etc etc. The practice of mirroring is a practical implementation of a larger concept of the book which is that the best negotiators listen, empathize, and don’t judge. They get in the shoes of the other person. They have no ego. They do accusation audits, “You are probably thinking I’m just trying to take as much money from you as possible.” When you call yourself out for something, it disarms the other person. At the end of the book, he makes the case that these tactics only mean anything if you are a good and honest person. Using them to manipulate or hurt or exploit someone just makes you a bad person. I had an experience in which I used the tactics in this book to negotiate my way of a no-show fee for Mary’s eye doctor, but I realized after the fact that that group probably doesn’t make a lot of money, the doctor is a wizard who is saving my child’s eyesite and that the no-show fee is to help cover the expense of having staff there ready to do Mary’s therapy even if Mary no-shows. I felt bad, and realized that these principles are most powerful when used for good purposes, not just self-serving ones. The Author was using these tactics to save people from kidnappers and terrorists, so his scenario was pretty straight forward. In the end it was a brilliant and unbelievably good book.

We caught our L.A. flight around 12:00 AM. This was roughly an 8-hour flight to Tahiti. I did sleep on the plane, but the sleep was a bit rough and hard on my back. Lily didn’t sleep very much. We landed around 6:00 AM in Tahiti.

Lily and I decided that we would dedicate Saturday to spending time with the children before taking our 8-day trip to Bora Bora. There were moments of accomplishing that vision, but by and large, Lily and I were both so exhausted (and using the little energy we had to get ready for our trip), that it turned mostly into a “kids run free” day. Lily and I both share the hope that we will return very refreshed from our trip so we can fulfill this vision of investing in our children and spending the time with them that our hearts desire.

For Lydia, a “kids run free” day basically meant “bake day” for her. She has been such a little baker lately. I don’t remember exactly all the things that she made Saturday (she made 3 or 4 things I think), but in recent history she has made waffles, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, muffins, and pudding. Lily did most of the muffins, but aside from that, Lydia made most everything else largely on her own. She LOVES baking and she asks to do it a lot. Lily and I always get slightly hesitant because of the mess we fear will be created (and often is), but Lydia, to her credit, often does a lot of clean-up, and even if it’s not perfect, the effort is enough for us to feel good about her continued baking.

I also just want to mention how in-love Lily and I have been with our kids lately. Lydia has been particularly delightful lately. She’ll help with the kids, do her dishes, help us when we ask and just generally be delightful. Mary too is this way, and will help take care of Clarissa, clean her room and just be a little angel. We couldn’t be more pleased with how our two oldest are turning out! Sometimes my heart just melts with Mary’s shy cuteness and the adorable innocent things she says and the love in her heart. Both of these girls light my life, and I’m already excited to see them again (I’m writing this from Bora Bora). The babies of course, are, in my view, the cutest bundles of joy in existence. Their smiles, hugs, laughs and even mischief fill me with mirth. I hope in 4 years to also be writing about what good “older kid” behavior they are demonstrating 🙂

Here is a picture of the pudding Lydia made on Saturday. I loved it!