My Vision
My name is James Miller and my goal is to help maximize the fulfillment of your life through the application of humanities most timeless wisdom.
I don’t know what struggles you face or the pain you’ve felt and I have no idea how harrowing your darkest moments have been. I don’t understand all the bull shit that you’ve had to deal with. But, I do know what it feels like to suffer.
I know what it’s like to question whether or not anything really matters and I know how hard it can be to find fulfillment. I also have a pretty damn good idea of just how bleak your thoughts can be.
My Pain
I was a very happy kid growing up and if my parents were struggling in any way, my sister and I couldn’t tell. We wanted for nothing and had a very good life. All it would seem was going well. But as I grew into my teens I began to feel a deep sense of forbidding, I began to feel the darkness my mind was capable of producing. When I started asking the deeper questions, when I started to try and figure out what really mattered, I realized just how difficult it could be to find a satisfactory place in life.
As you should, we ate as a family but we argued much of the time while there. Often times we would be yelling the same thing at each other, just saying it in a different way. Other times, irreconcilable philosophies collided and we were the casualties. We were going through the motions, functional as a family, and on the surface everything seemed fine. But we couldn’t admit that all of us were suffering. We couldn’t admit that all of us were in pain.
I grew up in Utah, and as most people know, Utah is largely Mormon. That combined with my lack of faith ostracized me from most of the people in my community. I always felt different, I always felt like an outcast. Though typically subtle, but occasionally overt, the pressure to join was there. There was always something hung over my head. I was preyed upon like a piece of meat just for being different. I was reminded over and over and over again that I didn’t fit in, that I didn’t belong unless. Like a version of Chinese water torture, I was continually pestered about why I didn’t believe.
Though I made some good friends, most of them left on a mission at the age of 19 and it was then that I truly began to struggle. I had no friends! I hated my father! I hated my self!
It was then that I decided to shut out my emotions. It was then I decided to operate on a purely logical basis. It was then I decided that I would solve every problem from my self. I survived, but oh how wrong I was.
For nearly twenty years, this mode of operation worked. For nearly twenty years, I managed to make my way in the world. But I knew that something was missing. I knew something vital, something essential, was lacking in my life.
That something was the ability to connect with others. That something was the ability to express and learn from all the pain one feels in life. That something is connecting with your emotions and utilizing them to find fulfillment. I’ve taken that something and created a framework that worked for me.
That framework is A Better Ten Commandments.
My Work
Growing up I worked for my father in construction. We framed houses, built condos, did demo work, and some smaller scale commercial work. During this phase of my life my father wanted nothing more than to teach me the value of hard work and to transcend the grueling life of a construction worker. I have an enormous amount of respect for the men and women that sacrifice their bodies to build our homes and cities, but it is not what I was meant to be.
My father, like everyone’s, wanted me to do big things with my life, he wanted me to surpass what he had achieved. He wanted me to be his legacy!
It took me 38 years to realize why I’m here and along that journey I’ve had some interesting jobs. I’ve hung upside down in a form covered in diesel fuel tying rebar in order to make the concrete dividers you see on the freeways. I have delivered food to people’s homes from restaurants that don’t deliver. I have worked in a coin store selling rare collectors items and gold bullion. I have been a computer tech. I have collated binders for the seven habits of highly effective people seminars. I have put stickers on a dollar bill origami book. I valeted Mike Tyson’s car. I delivered Christmas packages from UPS…. I have had a lot of interesting jobs.
None of those glorious learning experiences ended up being what I wanted to do. And as fate or chance would have it, I meet a friend that was going to flight school. I thought about it about for a few days and took a huge risk. That risk ended up being one of the best decisions of my life. My dad consigned on a private $80,000 loan and said, I will not help you pay for this, this is your responsibility. So off I went into the wild blue yonder.
In the beginning I thought my path was to become an airline pilot for a major airline, but a friend I had gone to flight school with changed all that. (Thank you Wes) A friend more adventurous than I had discovered Alaska and wanted to share in the it’s splendor. I got a job over the phone and ended up working in one of the most beautiful places on the planet for then next 11 years. Of course it was not all good, but the people I’ve meet, the friends I’ve made, and the places I’ve been, I wouldn’t give up for anything.
The last several years of my aviation career have certainly been the best. Working as a fixed wing medevac pilot in the glorious state that is Alaska has given me the freedom and experiences to help understand what truly matters in life. It has allowed me to travel the world and see how other cultures live. It has allowed me to see just how cruel and unfair life can be. It has given me a skill set that helps me function in my personal life. But the most important thing it gave me was time for myself. I was only working 2 weeks a month and 150 hours a year. That enormous gift gave me the time to really dig deep and answer some of life’s most important questions. My career as a medevac pilot helped me build a jumping off point to become who I was truly meant to be.
A Creator
