What CRE Leaders Can Learn from a ‘Positive Chaos’ Philosophy

How many motivational speakers and self-help gurus have urged their followers to seek balance in their lives? It’s good advice, right? Balance is a good thing, and imbalance is a bad thing. Right?

In theory, yes, it is. But as people living in the real world during incredibly tumultuous times, balance seems elusive at best and impossible at worst. But there’s good news.

“You will never achieve balance because it’s not what you get—it’s what you do.”

That’s the message author Dan Thurmon had for the attendees of Monday’s afternoon keynote address at the 2025 BOMA International Conference & Expo in Boston, titled, “Positive Chaos: Transforming Crisis into Clarity and Advantage.” In fact, Thurmon, president of Motivation Works, Inc., author of Off Balance on Purpose: Embrace Uncertainty and Create a Life You Love, and co-host of the popular “Wholesome Chaos” podcast, urged attendees to “lean in and go off balance, on purpose.”

If that sounds like unconventional wisdom, that’s because it is. “Balance is not a state; it’s a skill,” he said. Thurmon advocates intentionally leaning into uncertainty and disruption, rather than resisting it to become more resilient in the face of uncertainty and to achieve your goals. Because if you want to embrace the idea of change, “your first commitment is to being more present in the moments you occupy,” he said.

3 Areas That Hinder Achievement

What is it that prevents people from achieving what they dream of or accomplishing their goals? Thurmon identified three areas where people tend to struggle in their professional and personal lives that hinder their progress:

1. Willingness. In response to the question, “Will I do what it takes?” he noted that a lot of people aren’t honest about their true degree of willingness. Are you committed to growth even when the outcome isn’t guaranteed?
2. Ability. What do you need to learn? What skills must be developed to meet today’s evolving challenges?
3. Capacity. “The main area where I find people fall short is in capacity,” Thurmon observed. When time, energy, and money are fixed, it’s important to know how much you can take, and how much you can handle in this sea of uncertainty.  “What you’re honestly willing to do, you develop the ability to pull off what you want to accomplish,” he said.

Learning by Doing

In his often humorous and incredibly engaging session, Thurmon used physical demonstrations such as tumbling, juggling, peacock feather balancing, and riding a 6-foot unicycle to illustrate abstract ideas that challenge the way we approach doing things that are difficult.

For example, he had everyone in the audience try to balance a large peacock feather while looking down at their hands. The end result (predictably) was failure. However, when he advised the room to look upward at the top of the feather, the feathers stabilized surprisingly quickly.

“As adults, it can be very difficult to learn new information but when we have new experiences, it’s easier if we embody the learning,” Thurmon said. He pointed out that the audience had quickly learned to balance feathers because they simply tried a different strategy.

“In the process of work, we’re so fixated by the challenges of the problems in our face that we lose sight of the things we’re trying to accomplish in the first place,” he added. “It’s the power of having the right focus. It’s a mental discipline.”

The lesson? Focus determines effectiveness.

Taking the analogy a (literal) step further, Thurmon then instructed every attendee to begin walking while balancing the feather in their hands but with an essential tip: allow the feather to lean forward and follow it. The idea is that progress can be achieved through intentional imbalance—and it worked.

Thurmon continued underscoring his message through hands-on illustrations like juggling. Recalling a childhood memory of being mesmerized by a juggler at a Renaissance festival, he remembers hearing five words that changed his life: “Do you want to learn?” The entertainer saw the boy’s enthusiasm and taught him the skill—first with three balls.

When Thurmon wanted to learn to juggle with four, he was met with failure and assumed “I’m just not a four-ball juggler.” What he missed was the fact that he was trying a new skill using the same method, and what he realized later was that in order to add a fourth ball, you need to learn a new pattern. “The fourth ball changes everything,” he said.

That observation led to a conversation about the relationship between chaos and disruption and how we learn new patterns. If you want to move beyond your ability, you need to transcend your patterns.

In other words, growth comes from trying harder things, not mastering easy ones.

“Your potential is infinite—not because you can do everything, but because you can always learn and do more,” Thurmon said.

Patterns and Positive Chaos

He explains that most people view chaos as an acronym to describe the world around them: Challenging; Hectic; Anxious; Overwhelmed; and Stressful. He talked about the fact that most Americans think about quitting their jobs daily, and it’s heartbreaking how many people consider giving up on life itself just as frequently because we’ve been taught to fear chaos.

Contrary to popular belief, however, Thurmon suggests chaos isn’t random; rather, it’s a complex, open system sensitive to small inputs (think: The Butterfly Effect). While we can’t eliminate chaos, we can shape outcomes by changing our inputs—things like words, actions, and attention.

According to Thurmon, “positive chaos” involves using unpredictable change to accelerate purposeful transformation. For example, to learn to juggle with four balls, he needed to practice and reaffirm his willingness through failure. And he never got the hang of juggling four balls until he tried to juggle five.

“You stretch into uncertainty until it starts to stretch you,” he said. “Keep looking up. It sounds like a motivational cliché, but juggling is about execution, making good throws. It’s not about catching. We have to be able to monitor those targets and make adjustments,” he noted.

Key Takeaways

Through his inspiring and engaging session, attendees walked away with a few key action points to help them lean into uncertainty and transform chaos from a negative into a positive force in their lives:

• Focus upward—not just figuratively, but literally. Your focus shapes your results.
• Let go of perfectionism and guilt for not doing everything at once.
• Lean into fear and test yourself—the challenge itself is what builds capacity.
• Change your inputs (language, effort, engagement) to change your pattern.
• Stay curious, courageous, and connected—especially in an age of accelerating AI, disruption, and emotional strain.

Thurmon’s keynote wasn’t just a performance—it was a profound lesson in how to live and lead through change with intention. The only way to do that is to stop waiting for balance to arrive. Instead, lean into uncertainty, redefine chaos as opportunity, and use each challenge as a chance to grow stronger and more focused.