The Seventh Level

The Gulf
Have you ever noticed a constant low-level anxiety, a nagging sense that something is missing or unfulfilled in your life? Have you ever felt there was a train you should have boarded but it’s too far gone to catch? You are not alone; I've felt these things many times in my life. The resulting anxiety is agitating and agitation seems to deplete our skills, but what is actually fading is our will. Our perceived lack of skills shakes our confidence and inevitably begets indolence.
The problem is that once we recognize our shortcomings and agonize over fixing them, we see a seismic gulf between where we are and where we want to be. We think we need a massive infusion of motivational energy or a lucky break to bridge this gulf. Fortunately, that's not the reality of the situation. The gulf isn’t really as big as your perception of it. It’s simply a matter of perspective. Crossing it can be a gratifying flight, rather than a scary leap.
You don’t feel motivated right now because motivation erodes over time. You start a healthy regimen or begin writing a business plan or research adult education, but as the days go by the distracters take precedence over your whims. Whether it is work, the holidays, the kids, the seasons or the relatives, they all nip away at your desire. You skip the gym one day, then one week, and then jeez, it’s been years. You watch a sitcom rather than read a book. Soon the gulf between you and your ideal life begins to widen, until it seems improbable you will ever muster the big steaming pile of energy you would need to bridge it.
We don’t notice the ebb of enthusiasm. It is gradual, imperceptible, like the yellowing of our teeth or the expanding of our waistlines. It seems we wake up one day and discover an overweight underachiever staring back from the mirror in disgust. The old Joe is a lifetime gone, never to bound again to higher plains without a major life change that we are too timid, unsettled or dare I say too lazy to undertake. Norman Cousins said, “The great tragedy of life is not death, but what dies within us while we live.” The good news however, is that effective, enduring motivation actually begins with making tiny changes in lifestyle. Just as minor adjustments in eating habits lead to sustained weight loss, each small success gives you the confidence to try the next and then the next bigger step.
We’ve all started projects we didn’t complete. Our garages are cluttered with unused exercise equipment, the old car we're refinishing and half-built dog houses. We think these things are what we need to break out of doldrums, but it's not true. We simply need to understand our capabilities, devise a plan and begin to trust our brains. They are amazing little blobs of electro-chemical energy.
You will learn to make minor changes in your daily activities that are designed to get you in the habit of achievement. As you progress through incremental changes like those in your morning routine, you will draw a broader base line of personal development. You will set a higher personal standard. It will actually be harder to revert back to your old ways. Continual improvement becomes part of your character, not just an exhortation from a life coach. Accomplishing small steps and realizing the culmination of a plan have intrinsic rewards. The journey becomes as enjoyable as the final goal. That rising satisfaction is what keeps you moving forward. Motivation then becomes a lifestyle choice, not a mysterious force. You will set small goals out of habit, and then fix your sights on larger, more stimulating objectives.
You’re grandest goal should be what Viktor Frankl called “a compelling future vision,” but to achieve it you must make a commitment to take those small steps and then continue to build upon them. There are landfills of information about how to psyche yourself up, to motivate and ennoble your wayward soul, but many of the popular sources rev you up with no direction. What inevitably happens is you run into walls, and running into walls hurts, especially if you do it enthusiastically. To sustain directed motivation, you need a flexible tool for developing a plan you can execute, with routes plotted out and benchmarks for assessing your progress. Armed with this plan you will certainly and finally bridge that gulf. You cannot do this with desire alone. This book will teach you the process of formulating the exact plan you need.

Why Architecture?
“Architecture begins to matter when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our head.” – Paul Goldberger

Gratefully, the answer to how you achieve what matters is not shivering in a cave in Tibet or mumbling in the bowels of the Vatican libraries. It’s simple and pragmatic.
The solution is rooted in the extensive network of architectural practices. Why architecture? It's not just because architecture is artful, and its artisans idealistic; that's clear enough. But what is overlooked because of its very ubiquity is that architecture is the most pervasive created element of our lives; because architecture is at its core, a process - a thorough, coherent yet impassioned creative process, shaped into a structure of usable art. Architects have systems waiting to be embraced by all of us who need to tap on the door jam of possibility or perhaps, stare at it and then slink away. Get back here chickens.
The quote by Paul Goldberger is apt for the underlying theme of this book. It's about doing the right thing - providing the roof - but doing it in an extraordinary way, in a way that makes us feel alive and to feel that we matter.
We are going to build something together. We will turn your daydreams into ideas, your ideas into concepts and your concepts into reality. You will identify exactly what you want after first identifying your starting points. We’ll begin with the source of my inspiration, architecture, and the functional beauty that wraps around our lives each day - comforting, protecting, enticing… without saying a word. We’ll lock arms with the architects and use their brain power as a force multiplier. They may not realize it, but they’re on our team. You haven’t noticed them, but they are with us every already. There is no practical reason to do this alone and sharing, as it turns out, is actually fun. Thanks mom.