personal reflections

Introduction to who I am. My name is Paul Leverich.

I’ve lived enough life to know that most people only show you the highlight reel. The clean parts. The filtered parts. The “I’ve got it all together” parts.

That’s never been me.

I’ve walked through loss, pressure, mistakes, reinvention, faith, doubt, rebuilding, and starting over more times than I can count. I’ve learned that growth is rarely pretty. It’s loud. It’s lonely. It’s sacred. It’s stubborn.

I’m a thinker. A builder. A question-asker. A man who refuses to stay small just to make other people comfortable.

I believe truth matters. Integrity matters. Discipline matters. Healing matters. Legacy matters.

I’m here to talk about real life. Business. Spirit. Strategy. Pain. Purpose. Systems. Survival. Becoming.

No masks. No fake perfection. No borrowed personalities.

Just perspective, progress, and honest conversation.

If you’re here to grow, rebuild, and think deeper than the surface, you’re in the right place.

Welcome.

AMA with Brian Robertson. Rewatch the live AMA! Brian Robertson is the Holacracy founder now building a psychedelic church based on love, presence, and service

If this platform is built on trust, then I vow to show up as I am — open, honest, and real. Will I fail this test or flourish? Let’s find out.

Some folks in NYC turned an apartment into a community space in a way that sounds (at least on the face of it) pretty delightful: https://supernuclear.substack.com/p/case-study-merlins-place

Makes me wonder about doing something like that in my home – but then i find myself getting antsy. I like having a haven of quiet mineness – might even need it.

But also, when I read that post, something comes alive in me. It feels really exciting to imagine being a part of a community/space like this. Having a village sounds really nice (at least when I romanticize it and ignore the fact that there's a reason for the phrase "village idiot").

(meta: this post is also an effort to see if I can make this place feel like that. Feels like it needs to be able to include this kind of half-baked personal missive in addition to "bridgy" expertise and conversations about civilizational well-being. Technically, it can, of course. But spiritually? I'm not sure. I mean, it might just be that I don't particularly gravitate towards being part of a mostly textual virtual space. :shrug:)  

What's good about Trump? I don't follow (American national) politics a ton, but I know Trump is an incredibly divisive figure who just got convicted of 34 felony counts, while still being favored as the Republican candidate for the next presidential race.

 What's good about him, what he's done, and his policies? For example, less death in foreign wars—even the biased ChatGPT admits:

Trump's foreign policy led to fewer foreign deaths due to a reduction in large-scale military engagements, and his administration did not initiate new large-scale wars or military interventions—a significant departure from previous administrations that engaged in extensive military campaigns, such as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Being Out of Sync in a Group Meeting. I was just in a meeting that I was leading where, almost every time I spoke, someone else spoke at the same time. The other person would continue speaking and I would stop. It was as if my timing was wrong; I was out of sync with the group. I imagine there were a number of things going on. One is that I was holding the list of topics to talk about as if we needed to get through all of them in the time we had, while the group wanted to savor and speak to each item at length. But it wasn’t just that. Within a topic, I was always bumping against someone else, timing wise. It felt awful. Any ideas or comments about this phenomena?

Hello! And a question on measuring the quality of a connection. Hi Uptrusters! Sara here, joining for the conversations (debates? connections? community?) and because I’ve been frothing to see the inside of this platform ever since Jordan told me about it 🤤.

Since I imagine the best way to say hello here is to start an interesting conversation, here’s something I’ve been noodling on lately.

Right now I’m doing a bunch of research on loneliness and social isolation (two different things, as it turns out!) to write an article on How to make friends for the publication Clearer Thinking, which i think does the best independent psychological research and tool development of anywhere I know. In case you want more context for this post, here is the draft of the first half of the article, posted on my Substack while I’m working on it. https://authenticrevolutionary.substack.com/p/how-to-make-friends-part-1-inner?r=34w9f

There are a few research questions that have come up for me as I do this, areas of study that I think could be more explored and would be exciting to look at if we ever have Ph.Ds or grant funding for our field. If this topic interests people lmk and I’ll post more of the questions.

Here’s one I’ve been thinking on. There are a number of studies that look at how social connectedness, whether strong or weak-tie, affects health and happiness.

However, the metrics they use to ASSESS social connectedness seem…maybe incomplete, to me? For instance, I was reading a study this week on how the quality of conversations affects happiness and a sense of connection (study available here, if you want to read the results: https://psycnet.apa.org/manuscript/2019-62902-001.pdf)

The metrics they used to assess quality of connection were:
- Self-disclosure
- Depth of conversation (rated from superficial to substantive)
- Liking of the other person
- Prior knowledge of the other person

So here’s my question. What other metrics, if any, do you think would be pertinent to assessing the quality of a connection?

Telling people that I upvoted/downvoted their comment when I do and telling them why. (Triggered)(Feel super activated about the hiddenness and anonymity of the downvoting)

I want to see what happens when it’s ok to be explicit about affecting someone’s status.

(Fear that I’ll be avoided and ultimately alone. Anger at everything.)

(Longing to be the next me that’s social-cue numb to my own abrasiveness).

Not sure if this is triggered or not but I want the consequences of being known.

The pressure to be thoughtful. It’s an interesting thing - this feeling that I need to post something thoughtful here. I’m feeling tension emerge in my abdomen. There’s a belief that there’s a right and a wrong way to engage in this community with no clarity on what is right or wrong. Noticing that and letting that be.

Some Thoughts on Boundaries. Boundaries are mine. My portals to connection. They’re statements of fact: “whoops, I’m sorry, it turns out I can’t love from here anymore.”

The purest form doesn’t require anyone else to uphold. I can say “no” to a party I don’t want to go to. I can turn off my phone at bedtime. Asking someone not to interrupt me or not answering emails after work can feel a little trickier to uphold, because I have to be willing to walk away.

There are a bunch of socially agreed upon boundaries that are upheld by law enforcement, like cease and desists or restraining orders. It’s often not simple—in Texas I have a right to refuse anyone setting foot on my property (but what about racism, when my property is a business?).

There are some thoughts for now...