Matthew Plinck
Human Enthusiast and Life Leader
Introduction
Journeying through life leadership, the one quality and collective group of experiences that I have required from my mentors and coaches has been life experience. Life experience is a broad statement, so what does it look like. It can be articulated through the 3 p’s – personal, professional, and passion.
Within the 3 buckets of life experience, personal and professional have a sub-unit of measurement in community. Below is a bit about my experience within the context of the 3 p’s.
3 p's
Throughout our lives we experience love, happiness, despair, desire, ambition, loss, goal attainment, and failure. I have experienced all of the above and studied them. Through my studies and deep knowledge in the discipline of psychology, I have come up with strategies and applicable tools that can be used to most effectively manage them all.
Community,
What caused me a great deal of anguish growing up has become one of my greatest assets as an adult. My appearance has always been ethnically ambiguous. As a child and now as an adult I have never had a group orientation based on ethnic background or cultural similarities. The anguish as a child came from feelings of not belonging. As an adult, my ethnic ambiguity has afforded me the ability to be deeply intertwined with a plethora of ethnic groups. I have been able to understand and be engaged in the nuances of their culture. from cuisines and family dynamics to cultural traditions and orientation of thought.
Being an explorer by nature, I have tested and experimented with numerous career paths – from fighting fires to navigating the complex social environment of corporations. You can find some details about my professional experience below the 3 p’s. Through my professional adventure I have learned about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. By understanding motivators, I have been able to map out tools that are used in career path identification and how to uncover purpose.
community,
In the context of professionalism, this sub unit refers to role and diversity in experience. I have led teams and been led. I have been a collaborator and an individual contributor. My diversity of experience has put me with both blue- and white-collar professionals.
Passion is deep feeling and desire, it is an orientation of thought. It is also a predictor of where you will be, if you’re brave enough.
I have friends that are engineers and they are kept up at night by thinking of solutions to engineering problems. Because their passion gives them an orientation of thought geared toward engineering solutioning, the world becomes framed through that lens. while they look into the sky, they see cloud formations that give them engineering design ideas. When they sit across from a friend with clasped hands, they discover a new way to connect parts of a mechanism.
My passion has always been humans. What drives us, why we behave the way we do, how we act in social situations, the subtleties of our body language and facial expressions. You are what keeps me up at night, solutioning around our contentment is what motivates me, we are why I am a human enthusiast!
Firefighting
For two years I was one of two leading a team through the wild fires that ravage California in the dry season. During my experience as a wild land forest fire fighter, I was amazed to find that under extreme conditions, where fear and fatigue are abundantly present, our ability to care for each other’s well-being increases.
Healthcare
For a couple years I was a medical assistant and phlebotomist. I became a lead medical assistant at a clinic in Los Angeles. During my experience I realized that children did not like me if they needed shots. FYI the sucker did not help.
Corporate/tech industry
I am currently working in the tech space as a recruitment consultant. In a sales-based environment within a hot industry, the complexity of social interaction increases. It has been challenging and fun to learn how to navigate the space.
Coaching Experience
Outside of my life experience within the 3 p’s, I have collaborated with life leaders around the globe to work toward their clarity and generalized contentment.
My experience in the realm of life leadership has also been expressed in the classroom. I created and taught a course at UC Berkeley called “Cognitive Karate”. The course was featured in the L.A. Times. During the course I gave training on how we can be the architects of our neural circuitry and therefore our perspectives on life (image-below).
