Procrastination

Okay, it's been put off for long enough. Today we're gonna talk about procrastination. See what I did there? Why put off for later what can be put off forever?

But seriously, you probably do  not realize just how poisonous procrastination is to your goals.Life is quite often hectic and confusing. We are so busy dealing with things on a continuous basis that when a chance to stop and take a breather arrives we jump all over it. And there is nothing wrong with that.

But when some opportunity to advance your dreams comes up don't put it off until later. I like to say procrastination procreates.Because once you put a thing off for the first time you have set a
 precedent. After all, putting it off once was alright. Your life isn't likely to slow down and wait for you to catch up on the things you want to do. So each time that thing comes up in the future you are just as likely to be as busy and/or as tired as you were when it came up the first time.  So, once you set that precedent you are just as likely to keep making excuses every time it comes up. What you put off once you will probably never do unless forced to by some outside force.

Take a couple of minutes and think about your life and you will realize that I am right.Think about all the things that you want to do, things that you should do. Think about all the things that never get done, things that if you had started them when the idea first occurred to you would be done by now. Think about how you could be enjoying the fruits of past labor, rather than dreading the work that you know is ahead of you.

When you put off something that is supposedly important to you by saying "oh i'll do that when I get the money " what you are really saying is that that thing is not important enough to you for you to either create the money for it or find it within your budget.

When you put off something that is supposedly important to you by saying "oh i'll do that when I get the time " what you are really saying is that that thing is not important enough to you for you to make the time to get it done.

When you do this, you are playing the victim. You are saying that if life would just fall into this exact certain pattern then you will be able to to the things that you want. You can get what you want out of life. But you have to be willing to work for it. And if the thing you are claiming that you want isn't worth risking some extra time or money on, then it isn't important to you, despite what you may say or think to the contrary.

Stop waiting for the perfect time or circumstance. There isn't going to be one. Life doesn't work that way and is perfectly willing to pass you by. It will go on whether you participate or not. You get stop making excuses and start making time for the things that are important to you. Or accept responsibility for failing to reach your goals.

Weakness is awesome

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who is going to school to become a mechanic. He was telling me about a part of the class that he was kind of struggling with. He was looking at this thing that was giving him trouble and seeing it as something that could make his next couple of weeks in the class rather difficult.

My reaction at first confused him. I saw what he was saying as an awesome opportunity rather than an obstacle. Most of the things he had been learning up until this point were things he already knew or had at least a passing familiarity with. But this "new" thing will increase his knowledge base and expand his mind. Once he conquers it he will have additional confidence in his abilities.

That is not what makes this thing so great though. What makes it great, is that he is now aware that he is not familiar with or good at this particular thing. In short it is a weakness. And the awesome thing about that is, once you are aware of a weakness you can annihilate it. While you are unaware of it, you can do nothing about it.

People tend to look at life kind of backwards. We are often only happy when things are running smoothly and flip out when things stop going according to the plan. If everything in life always went smoothly and according to plan we would never develop the tools to handle problems. It is the obstacles and challenges we meet on the road that offer us the ability to improve and grow. Instead of getting frustrated or angry,we should celebrate when difficulties occur.

A person who goes through life without any obstacles has no real idea of what they are good or bad at. If no tests of your abilities ever occur, there are no results to look at and compare how you did with how you think you should have done. If there is no metric for comparison, how do you know whether to be satisfied with what you can or can not do?

On the contrary when something happens to show a weakness, limitation, or lack of knowledge on your part, it is a blessing. It gives you the opportunity to check in with how you feel about that thing. If not knowing or being good at that thing does not bother you then nothing need be done. If it does however, then you have a jumping off point for change. Knowing that you are not good at a thing in the present provides everything you need to get started being good at that thing in the future.

If the lack is simply in knowledge, a quick trip to the library or internet can fix that for you. If it is a thing that you are not good at doing, you can watch others do that thing and get advice from those who are successful at it. And then on your own you can practice,practice practice. If your weakness is a habit that you have do not attempt to quit the habit. Simply replace it with another one.

Instead of getting upset at other people when they point out a weakness that you may have, sincerely and enthusiastically thank them. One they are doing you a great service and two it will provide you the opportunity to show them how great it is to have weaknesses.

Are you nuts!?

Have you ever been out and about in the world and come across a homeless person talking to him or herself, perhaps rather loudly? If you have, you probably thought that person was crazy, especially if you are in earshot of them for long enough to realize that they are actually having an argument with some other person that no one can see.

There are plenty of jokes out there about how you are crazy if you talk to yourself, or only if you listen to what you have to say or only if you talk back to yourself. But, if the homeless people that talk to themselves are crazy, then so are you and I and everyone else in this world that is old enough for conscious thought. Does that seem like an insane declaration? Maybe but let me explain why I say this.

Certain thoughts, feelings and events in our lives naturally remind us of people with whom we have associated in the past. When we think of those things our minds automatically call up those people and what they would say or think about those things.

This is a normal process and can be intentionally used to great benefit in our lives. Many inspirational and motivational speakers encourage people to find traits that they want in themselves and to think of people living or dead who have or had those traits. They then suggest that we imagine ourselves at a conference table surrounded by these people and have regular meetings in our head with these people to work as a team on solving our day to day problems and work on bigger and better goals.

The homeless person arguing out loud with a person no one can see has simply lost sight of the fact that the other voice to whom he is speaking is within his head and not real. The other likely problem is that the person he is arguing with is not a person who is or was a positive influence on his life.
Does talking to oneself still seem crazy?

Well how about this then? When you are out with a group of friends and one of them suggests going to a place where an ex of yours is known to hang out what happens? You hesitate and are probably silent for a moment or two. Why?

Because you are talking to yourself. There is a conversation going on in your head all the time. And whether you want to admit it or not, it is not a monologue. There are two or more voices in your head almost all the time. Even if they are all yours, they are separate. You think about wanting to go to that bar or club and all sorts of reasons or excuses not to go come up. And as soon as you attempt to work through any of them you begin debating with yourself about pros and cons.

A debate is not a one sided affair. If it were there would be no need for its existence. If you automatically naturally agreed with yourself, you would just do want you wanted to do all the time and there would never be a conflict. But you talk to the other you all the time, telling it what you want to do and arguing with it when it does not agree with what you want.

If talking to oneself, out loud or in ones head is normal, then I submit that the opposite must be crazy. Do not trust people that claim they never talk to themselves. They are either insane or lying.

What do you know?

What I have for you today isn't so much a lesson as it is food for thought.

Most people think that the universe is divided into two categories when it comes to knowledge. First there are the things that we are aware of, which we call the things that we know. And then there are the things that we realize the existence of but about which we have little or no information about, which we call the things that we do not know. 

There is a third much larger category though. It contains all of the things that we do not know that we do not know. In truth, the entirety of the first two categories would fit inside but a single drop of what is the ocean of things that we do not know that we do not know.

It is very common to look around at your surroundings and after once becoming comfortable with them to believe that you know what there is to know about them. But this simply is not true. The more we learn and study our natural environment the more things we learn about. Our horizons expand as we include new information into our knowledge base and new things become possible for us.


The truth is these "new" things were always possible, we just did not know it. Our understanding of all the facts at hand is what limits what we can and can not do. Often when we learn something new, old theories and beliefs automatically become invalidated. Things that we "knew" beyond a shadow of a doubt were true turn out to be false.

It used to be a "fact" that the world was flat. We know now that the world is round. It used to be a fact that if you wanted a message to travel thousands of miles it would take weeks. We can now have a message travel the globe in mere seconds. It used to be a fact that the sun the moon and the stars all rotated around the earth. We know now that the earth is but a small part of a solar system that travels through a much larger galaxy.

Man has been on this planet and recording history for but a few thousand years. During that time our knowledge base has multiplied itself many times over. This happened very slowly at first. But as ways of sharing knowledge have become more and more rapid the increase has been at near geometric rates.

Yet, scientists believe that more than 99 percent of everything that we believe to be true is false. We simply have not learned enough about the universe to know what really is and what is not.

How arrogant the average person is in his belief that what he knows is a large fragment of what there is to know. If you were to take any man from any era and show him the wonders of life five hundred years in his future you would likely blow his mind, with all of the "impossible" things that are just part of everyday living.

So, I challenge you. Set some time a side, a few minutes, maybe half an hour. Think about all the things you know. Think about all the things you don't know. Then do your very best to imagine looking into that ocean of things that you do not know you do not know. Think of all the things that might be if the first two categories of knowledge were expanded, if you knew more and were more aware of the things you know you do not know. In your mind's eye see if you can shift some of the things from that third category into the other two.

The weed that can destroy your dreams

Persistence, hard work, dedication, discipline. These things are all part of what is necessary to become successful in meeting many of your long term goals. They could probably in fact be called the pillars upon which the possibilities of your success rest.

But one simple thing can knock all of these pillars down and destroy your chances of ever achieving your goals. I like to call it procrastination's evil twin. What is this heinous thing with the power to ruin your dreams?

Making exceptions that deviate from the plan once you have committed to a specific goal or course of action. What do I mean by this?

If you have ever gone on a diet for health or weight reasons you should have some idea of where I am going with this. For the first few days your willpower is good and you stick to the plan. But then you start thinking you can cheat just a little bit, after all nobody but you will know and it will just be the one time right? So you eat that candy bar or those extra carbs or whatever it is that you know you are not supposed to.

The thing is, we are creatures of habit. Whatever it is that we have done in the past we tend to rationalize and explain away as okay. Then you decide, if it was okay to cheat on your diet that one time, maybe it would be okay to do maybe two or three times a week. And if that is okay, then you decide to cheat on your diet once a day every day. It's okay though. It is only a little bit. It doesn't count. Soon enough you are back to your original eating habits. The diet disappears entirely.

Or maybe you've lost your job due to issues with tardiness. So you go get another job, and you commit to yourself that you will never be late. And for the first couple of weeks you keep that commitment. You are bound and determined not to lose your job for that reason again.

But then there's that one day that you don't feel so well and you crawl out of bed twenty minutes later than usual. You do what you can to make up the time on your way to work, but you still stroll in a few minutes late. Later on when you think about it, you decide, well, it wasn't the plan but it was okay. You weren't feeling well. You are better now though, so it's not an issue.

Later on you are late a couple of times due to bad driving conditions caused by rainy weather on your way to work. But, that's not your fault is it? (actually it is) . And gradually as time goes on, you make more and more excuses about why it's okay to be late and how it is not a habit. Soon you are in jeopardy of losing this job as well.

How do you prevent this from happening to you?

As far as diet goes, it is insane to expect yourself to keep to a specific routine everyday for the rest of your life. You should plan that into the commitment before you make it. Perhaps, you could include in the plan a free day or two a week where you eat whatever you desire. Then when you feel like you want to cheat, you can reason yourself out of doing so by just agreeing to wait a couple of days until you are free to have what you want. The idea that you do not need to stick strictly to your diet plan and can still be successful is true with nearly every diet. The problem comes with making too many exceptions. And once you make one you will make others. If you include exceptions as part of the rule, you can avoid breaking the rules. Also from a psychological standpoint, knowing that there are set times where you are allowed to deviate from your "plan" often makes the need to do so less strong.

As far as not being late to work, that one is much simpler. Find out what time you need to be to work, how long it typically takes to get there during whatever traffic patterns typically occur when you should be on your way there. Then leave your house one hour earlier than you think you need to in order to be on time. Do this everyday that you work without fail. If traffic is occasionally bad enough to still make you late, you will still likely be to work much earlier than others you work with that do not have this habit.

In general, think through your commitments clearly before making them. Realize where you are likely to want to make exceptions. If possible make them part of the plan. But then once you make the commitment, do not allow yourself to make exceptions, ever, unless it will save a life.

Reflection On Tradition

When I go out to my favorite burger joint, I always order exactly the same thing, prepared exactly the same way, with exactly the same condiments and sides. Do I do this because I am a staunch traditionalist that does not believe in change?

Far from it. My first couple of dozen visits to that place consisted of me tinkering and experimenting with different combinations of ingredients. Some were right out because I simply did not like them. Others did not get a chance because I already knew that they would not go well with other things that I did want on my hamburger. Eventually, I found the combination that I like the best.  And for the last two decades, every time I go there I have had my food prepared the same way. It has become tradition for me and it works for me. I can not speak for others and would not presume to tell them what they will or will not like.

But if some new condiment or topping were to come out that I liked, I would break with tradition. I would  experiment again until I found what worked best and make that the new standard.

I make(rather infrequently) one of the tastiest marinara sauces that I have ever had. This sauce takes 24-48 hours to get right. It is very thick and meaty. So far everyone that has ever had it has wanted me to make more so they could enjoy it again. It is a recipe that I learned by watching first my great grandmother and then later on my mother as they prepared it.  My great grandmother was from Italy and I can only assume she learned it from someone she knew when she was much younger.

You would think then that my marinara sauce is traditional and that the recipe is set in stone. But the fact of the matter is, I never make it the same way twice. Sure, the base ingredients are the same, the tomatoes,ground beef and garlic. But which herbs go in and how much is different every time. Also close to the end of the cooking time, something sweet to cut the acid of the tomato gets added. Sometimes it is sugar, other times it is cocoa powder or wine.

I never make the same sauce twice, yet the results are always identical. It gets rave reviews every time. How is this possible?

When you believe that everything should be done according to tradition, there are well worn pathways in your life for each and every thing to fit into. As long as all of the right things arrive in their appropriate time and place everything is fine. When you blindly follow tradition life becomes routine, mechanical even.  But if a single thing is out of line, tradition falls apart. Then there is fear and uncertainty over what to do and how to handle things.

With my marinara sauce, I know what things create what flavors and what general chemical reactions are created or need to be. So I can at a moments notice substitute one ingredient for another. If you know the purpose of each individual component in a situation then you are not required to follow a preset recipe, or tradition.

This allows for much greater flexibility because then you can just trade out one component for another that does the same thing and get very similar often better results. And when this is your general practice, there is no fear or uncertainty. When experimentation is the norm, you can and will proceed with greater confidence, which will lead to even greater successes.

Non Example

One of my best friends in this world has been (until recently) over five hundred pounds for probably about ten years. When it comes to health and nutrition and what you should and should not do to get your metabolism working properly, he has more knowledge than any other two people that I know.

If a person is looking for just about any kind of dietary information or advice, he either knows it or knows where to direct a person to find it. He can give long lectures on the benefits of one food or the hazards of some supplement. People do ask his opinion,but they rarely follow his advice when it comes to being healthy.

Why?

Because he has failed to show by his own actions that he truly understands and agrees with the advice that he gives. The two most likely options are, either he is following it and he is wrong about its effectiveness, or he is not following it and he is right. Neither of those two circumstances inspire faith in what he says.

A slim in shape person is going to have people begging them for diet, exercise and nutrition information. And people will listen to and follow what they say with near religious devotion. They MUST know what they are talking about. See how great they look!

Whether you are giving someone advice or selling them a product, people are going to judge you based on how that thing is being used by you personally.

If you go door to door as a shoe salesman you had better wear some of the very same shoes that you sell, because if you do not, people are going to want to know why not. If the shoes are not good enough for you to wear, they are not good enough for other people to want to buy.

Sometimes when I go out, I will go to a mall and stop at the food court. If I see a new restaurant that I have not eaten at before, I will go over and ask the employees how the food there is. If their response is that it is very good, sometimes I give it a chance. But every time an employee has told me they do not know, they eat somewhere else, they have never gotten a sale.

The point here is that you need to lead by example. What you say and how you say it are almost completely non important, when compared to what you do. If you provide the right example in your way of being, your advice, your product, whatever it is that you have to offer, sells itself.

Take your own advice. Be the person you are suggesting others be. Use your own products and be able to express to people what your life was like both before and after having them. If you show by your way of being that the things you are offering have enhanced your life in a way that seems appealing to others, they will want what you have.

And they will practically beat down your door to get it. You won't even need a sales pitch. All you will have to do is show up and collect payment.

Communism vs America

A commune is generally formed by a group of people that do not like what they see in the world. They think that they can do a better job of creating a community that works and plays together than what they see around them. So these people get together, buy land, and build a new community, one apart from the world. They do their best to be self sufficient and usually only deal with outsiders when they absolutely have to.

While this might seem like a nice ideal there are some flaws with it. For one, there tends to be a rather large prejudice that builds up. Space is usually limited so only a select few can be included. And people that are part of the commune are automatically trusted associates and people outside of it are automatically subconsciously villianized.

There is also a great degree of selfishness involved when you have the power to do a great good and you confine it within a small group, especially one that avoids others at all cost. People who form such a commune are not making the world a better place. They are basically robbing the world of good influences and leaving others to deal with a higher concentration of the bad.

Take America on the other hand. Our country was originally founded by people who were, much like many communists, tired of being persecuted. The difference here is that in America there was a vast unknown amount of land. And all were welcome. We set up a system of government to protect the rights of those newly arrived as well as those who were already here.

In addition to accepting others from all walks of life with different political, religious and social beliefs, America does not avoid the rest of the world. The Unites States has trade agreements with many different countries around the world. We share technology to the mutual benefit of all involved.
We get involved in conflicts around the world. We do our best to keep things fair and just. When possible we share our ideals that all men should be free to live their lives as we do. We do what we can to make life better for others. We strive to make the world in our image just as we constantly work to improve that image. We do our best to make the world a better place.

And that is one of the major flaws with communes in general. They make life better for its participants but do not help the world at all. Having said all this, I live in a rather small commune that involves just a single house. We share everything, our bills, our income, our food and our philosophy.

In America our form of federal government is called a democracy but is actually more like a republic. And as a people we say this is the government we believe in. Yet most houses are run like dictatorships or monarchies. Think about that...

There never was any doubt about our political beliefs. Democracy is the best system in the world and is the way we run our commune. The pooling of our resources just seemed to make the most sense as a way of making sure that all necessary bills got handled. So, we run a democratic commune.

Unlike most, we have a plan that involves growing and spreading out, taking our philosophy to the world and making it a better place to be. We believe that our small group of like minded nonjudgemental individuals allows people a safe haven to be able to focus internally and deal with the issues that keep them from being happy people. It is our goal to find people who are unhappy with their lives, to assist them in changing into the people they want to be and whenever possible to include them in our numbers so that we can assist an ever larger number of people as time goes on.

Experience

Have you ever tried to avoid reading a big heavy book for a book report by getting someone else to summarize the book for you. Perhaps you used Cliffs Notes. Then you wrote up your report based on someone else's summary.

If you have, you probably did alright but not amazing with your report. But what if, after you handed in your report, the teacher called on you to answer some specific question and to back up your answer with how you think a certain character in the book would have felt in the circumstance. You would probably be floundering at that point, not sure what to say. After all if you had actually read the book you should be qualified to answer the question.

But, since you did not, you would not have the knowledge that would have been gained by the experience of actually reading it. You only have the limited knowledge based on the summary that you used. Due to the nature of summarizing, a great deal of the detailed specifics of what went on in the book would be completely unknown to you.

The same is true in nearly every area of life. People are constantly looking for the quick way or the shortcut to a thing. And the truth of the matter is, after you have gained the knowledge and experience of a thing it is easy to condense most of that information down to a few easy sentences or paragraphs.To other people who are just as learned in the topic you are discussing as you are, those few words will call up the entire experience and they can then comment on their thoughts and feelings on the subject.

People without that collection of knowledge and experience will only get the base meaning behind your words and will have no framework for which to apply them to. Often times your summary will make no sense to them at all for this reason.

Think for a moment of a mathematician. If you were to walk up to him and ask him to start explaining to you a certain differential equation, his answer would likely make no sense at all to you if you were not also a mathematician. The reason for this is because it is an advanced math. If you do not already know calculus, and a number of other things you would not have the knowledge to be able to do anything with his answer.

What about man's search for enlightenment? Lots of movies and books show the novice going up to a wise man or master of some sort and asking for the secrets to life and happiness. Invariably, the answer is always something that the unlearned person can not understand.

In a great many areas of life a person learns things slowly over time and at each step adds a bit more to their knowledge base. Eventually they are able to come to understandings and conclusions that simply were not possible from the start. Their paradigm changes over time to include more and more complex notions based on things learned much earlier. The person who completes this process is not the same person who started it.

There is no quick easy way. If you want to be successful at a thing you need to put in the time required to gain the knowledge and experience. You must surround yourself with the thing you want to know and look at it from new and different angles as you learn more and more about it.

Then, one day, people will come to you and ask you to summarize the subject that you are an expert at. And on that day, you can smile cryptically and give them an answer that is perfectly true but makes no sense to them.

Power and responsibility

"With great power comes great responsibility."

This quote is often attributed to Stan Lee, as it is a quote from one of the characters in the ever popular Spiderman comics and movies. That exact phrase may have come from him, but the sentiment did not start with him. A similar phrase is attributed to Voltaire in the 1800's. And there is a passage in the bible that uses different verbiage but says essentially the same thing.

But what does it actually mean? Having power means you can do whatever you want right? Or else what is the point of having power? Being king, president or politician means you get to rule and tell other people what to do does it not?

Wrong on all accounts. The above quote means that power comes with an obligation. Once you have power, yes, you do have an ability that those without power do not. But that ability is not free. It is a two way street. There is both give and take. In most cases the obligation is keeping safe and improving the lives of yourself and those whom you oversee.

In essence presidents and politicians are either on par with or generally are a lesser form of king. So we will use kings as the template for a ruler.

Originally there were no nobles and no peasants. All men were more or less on even footing. Some men were more aggressive and warlike than others. They would raid and pillage and plunder. Other men decided to band together to protect themselves. One man would declare or be declared leader over them. They would defer to him and his leadership, following his orders as long as he continued to keep them safe. When he did not he would be replaced.

Each small area would have one of these leaders who would be called a chief or some equivalent. Over time multiple areas would start to work together to be safer from larger and larger enemy groups. At some point all of the chiefs would get together and pick one to be chief among them all. And that is more or less how the first kings came to be. Their job was the same for a much larger amount amount of land and people as it would have been for their own small piece of land and people. To provide for them and to keep them safe.

In return a tribute would be paid from each of the other chiefs, that was some form of tax from their own lands and people. The king was allowed to use this tribute as he saw fit as long as he was taking the best care of all of the people under his care that he could.  In such a way, the feudal system came into being with all it's lords and ladies and so on.

Kings became wealthy people with the ability to wield great power. Many of them abused it. And when they did, it eventually came back to haunt them. The people that give a leader power will only put up with that abuse for so long before they stop following him or replace him by whatever means necessary.

The purpose of a leader is not to rule. Every leader is a public servant. Or to put it more correctly, to rule properly is to serve. The reason that a group of men lend one man their strength and resources is because they believe that he can accomplish things with them that they themselves are not willing or not able to.

A good king collects taxes so that he can afford to maintain a force to protect his people and to have stores of food kept in reserve in case of disaster. A good king also makes laws designed to protect the rights and lives of his people. It is his job to negotiate with leaders of other lands for the safety and prosperity of his people.

To one degree or another all of these things that apply to a king apply to a president or politician. Taxes, decisions about the military, the making of new laws, they are all part of the responsibility that a leader bears for the well being of their citizens. Unlike a traditional king though, It is even more important for presidents and politicians to use their power for the benefit of their people. This is because they are voted into office and can be much more easily removed than a king.

I am sure you can see by now that in ruling a land, power brings an obligation to those who give you that power. How do you think this same concept would be reflected in a business? Or a religion?

Determination

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book where the hero has the odds overwhelmingly in favor of his enemy yet he or she somehow manages to win the day in spite of this? There are thousands of them out there. Surely you have.

Often in these situations doing nothing means a life of sorrow and shame. Failure means death. But victory means getting out from under the thumb of tyranny or desolation. People know that the odds of them winning are so low as to be laughable but they follow the hero anyways. Why?

Because they can see a level of commitment within the hero that they find inspiring. He gives a rousing passion filled speech and they all become fired up and join him. His determination is a thing which can be felt by all who behold him. It is in the look in his eyes, the overall expression on his face. It is in his body posture, and within the tone of his voice.

Every ounce of his being screams out with determination to change the circumstance or to die in the attempt. This determination awes and inspires his followers. His words flow over them like a wave and fill them with that same level of determination until they are chomping at the bit to rush forward and meet the problem head on.

Whereas the oppressor what does he have? Often his forces are larger and better trained with better equipment. All of these things are important advantages. Yet in the end the hero's side wins out. Why?

Again the answer is determination. The hero and his men are fighting with all their heart and soul to simply see another day of life. The men on the other side are just fighting because their commander tells them to or if they happen to be mercenaries they fight for gold. No amount of experience or discipline can make up for heart and determination.

A man who fears for his cubs will fight like a lion. Take the battle of Thermopylae for example. There is some historical disagreement over the size of Xerxes army at the time. But whether his army numbered one million as the story goes or around one hundred and fifty thousand as historians claim, does not matter. In either case the Greeks were still outnumbered more than twenty to one. It is said that about a thousand Greeks died in that battle and over twenty thousand Persians died. That means that even outnumbered twenty to one, for every Greek that died twenty Persians died.

Going into that battle King Leonidas knew he and his men were not ever returning home alive. But still his men followed. Why? Determination. They were determined to keep Xerxes and his army from getting the opportunity to enslave their wives and children and to stall the Persians so the rest of the Greek army could retreat and so that their navy could win a decisive battle.

How different would your life be if you attacked all of your problems with the same level of determination that King Leonidas did?

The best intentions

You know, it's kind of funny. I was just reading over what I wrote yesterday and I realized just how often things do not end up turning out the way we think they are going to.

My original idea when I started yesterday was to start out with referencing me sending my friend a book that I thought would be good for his overall growth as a person and then to provide a couple of other examples about how there are no shortcuts to getting what you want in life. That quite obviously did not happen yesterday. No worries, it will keep for another day. And if it is truly important it will come out eventually.

My writing here frequently veers off at some obtuse angle and I end up talking about something quite different than I had meant to at first. But, that should not and indeed does not really surprise me. The reason for this is that my method for writing these posts is not really structured at all.

I know that many people feel that you should have some kind of outline before you begin writing with predetermined talking points and perhaps an ordered list or two all set up and a clear beginning, a  middle and an end and some way of tying it all up with a neat little bow. That method seldom works for me.  And even if it did, as you may have noticed with some of the three and four part posts, sometimes, I have trouble keeping what I have to say down to 2000 words or so even when I have no real plan for what to say.

Don't get me wrong. I am a big proponent of having a vision and a flexible action plan and working the plan until you reach your goal. And there are many areas of my life that are structured as such. This just is not one of them. And this is working for me.

Some days while I am writing about one thing a thought will occur to me about something else that I should say but that does not fit in with the current topic. Sometimes I will backtrack a little bit and find some way of making the two topics merge. Other times I will jot down a sentence or two about the new topic in a notepad file on my computer and save it for the next day.

Most of the time though, before I begin writing, I have absolutely no idea what it is that I am going to talk about. I sit down at my computer desk with my wireless keyboard in my lap. I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. With my eyes still closed, I ask the universe what I should talk about. After a few brief moments thoughts and ideas begin to flow towards me. Some of those thoughts and ideas resonate with things that have happened recently in my life and I take a moment or two to reflect on those things, and think about how I feel about them and what other things they remind me of. After a couple of more minutes I have a rough idea of several concepts that I could write about.

If those things are similar I do what I can to include them all. If they are not I pick the one about which I have the most to say, or the one that I am the most passionate about and begin writing. Then I just walk down the path that my heart and my mind together tell me to travel until I am done for the moment.

I do not worry about whether or not what I said in the end was what I meant to at the start. It is my firm belief that what I say in each post is what needs to be said at the time. There is someone for whom what I say is the perfect thing for me to have said. Maybe it is you and maybe it is not. I believe that eventually all of the important things I have to say will come out. And, I intend to be writing for a long time yet to come.

As long as my words are mostly positive and empowering, and I am either teaching a lesson to others, learning a lesson myself or chronicling some event where either or both can happen I am happy with my results. And I hope you are too.

Judgement

Yesterday, I sent a very empowering non-fiction book titled "The Science of Getting Rich" to a friend of mine. I was thinking to myself that I hope that he truly sees value in the book, that he really gets it so to speak.

Many such books, including this one, have a chapter at the end that sum up the book.  And even some of the ones that do not, have either a jacket or a first or last page that sum up what the book is about. Often, people will skip ahead to such summaries and decide whether or not they agree with the statements made therein. Thankfully, my friend is not the sort of person that tends to do these things. If he were, then both his time and mine would be completely wasted by my sending it to him.

The problem with people that do act this way is that they will judge the book based solely upon their previous knowledge of the world without actually reading it. The purpose of reading books with "new" information in them is learn about new things not to judge them based on things you already know.

In my personal life, there have been dozens of books that I did not agree with the overall summary at the time, before I read them. But, by following along and reading the guiding principles that made up the unfamiliar philosophies, testing each of the parts individually and finding them to be true, by the end I was entirely in agreement with what was being presented to me. I have become a better stronger person as a result, both physically and mentally.

All of the knowledge within a two hundred page book cannot be imparted in two or three pages. So "judging a book by its cover" just leads to one remaining in ignorance and no new growth can occur as a result.

Now what happens when you judge a person the same way?Quite often one person will be judged by others even before they speak. The way a person dresses and their general posture(the artwork on their cover) will be enough for other people to get a preconceived notion of what that person is about and how they think.  Then they open their mouth and say something and we continue judge them based on what they just said. We use a few chance brief words(the summary of the book) that come out as a way of deciding for ourselves whether or not this person has value.

Since those words are not likely to be that person actually, intentionally summing up their philosophy and  beliefs, it is even more unfair to treat a person this way than a book. The sum total of useful knowledge in any given person would likely fill dozens if not hundred of volumes, if we were to listen to everything that person could actually tell us about their life and experiences.

I believe that if people are not being openly hostile or aggressive there is no reason to discard them simply because we do not agree with the first couple of paragraphs that they speak. When people say something that you feel you may disagree with, ask deep probing questions so that once they have finished answering you have a complete understanding of what exactly it is that they are saying and why they feel that it is true. Then armed with this knowledge make a decision about whether or not you agree with them. But if you do not agree with them, discard the information as being without value, not the person.

Do not make snap decisions based on very little input. You can not make an accurate assessment of the facts until you have them all. Never judge a book by its cover and always give each man enough rope to hang (or free) himself.

A few more words on gratitude pt2

Now imagine that every person on the planet is born with a certain internal reserve of energy and at that person's birth a certain amount of the energy in the universe is set aside to handle working with that person to assist them in making all their hopes and dreams come true. Assume that the amount of energy the universe puts aside for each person is an order of magnitude higher than the amount that any person can ever achieve, so that the universe can always adequately reflect the amount that the person gives off no matter how their emotions and thoughts fluctuate. What a person gives out the universe will give back. Like breeds like.

With this in mind, imagine that a person is working towards a goal that requires 100 units of this energy to achieve, getting homeowner's insurance for example. Positive energy is a creative force and negative energy is a destructive force. Achieving a goal is about making an improvement or about building something, gaining or increasing. So we will need 100 units of positive energy to achieve this goal. Each point of negative energy in what we say do or think will decrease the amount of positive energy. They cancel each other out.

So the person working towards this goal is excited and happy about their vision and puts out their maximum effort that they can at one point in time and let's say that's five units of positive energy. You as the universe see this person with that vision, are impressed with their excitement and positivity and you reflect their energy with five units of positive energy.

Now they are ten percent of the way there. The next day occurs and they are working more towards their goal and everything looks great. They provide five more units of positivity and so do you. Then they are twenty percent of the way there.

Day three comes around and while they are working towards their goal an obstacle comes up. The insurance agent tells them that there is going to be a delay because inspections need to be done. The best thing for the person to do would be to say okay cool how do we do that. Let's get it done. Then today could be another day of ten percent achievement. Instead the person gets frustrated with the delay and becomes negative. Here is the important part of this lesson.

You as the universe are saying we're about a fifth of the way to you having this goal are you sure this is what you want? And the person's reply is totally negative. Five units of negative energy are generated by the person and you as the universe decide that the person does not want what they have said they do. You respond by applying five more units of negative energy. Now they are back to the 10% of the way towards their goal that they were on day one. And the way this will show up is by more obstacles and challenges occurring as the universe again asks what they really want.

As you can see, in order for any real forward progress to happen, the person is going to need to focus all of their thoughts, words and deeds positively towards accomplishing their goals.

If a person is putting their best effort forward, while living with faith that they will receive that for which they are working towards and are grateful for those things which they have yet to receive there can be no doubt about the results. The universe is constantly being updated with the truth that they want exactly what they have asked for and they are sure to receive it.

Keep in mind also that things will sometimes not happen on the timetable that you would like due to the fact that you as a person do not know the amount of energy required to bring you what it is that you desire. But, often when things do not happen when you want them to, when they finally do, something about them will be even better than that for which you had originally planned.

Be persistent in maintaining an attitude of gratitude,while putting your best foot forward and faithfully believing you will get what you want, and all your dreams will come true

A few more words on gratitude pt1

In some previous posts I have mentioned that being grateful is an important part of being successful in life. Some recent real life experiences have caused me to do some more thinking along those lines.

We have been attempting to replace the lender placed insurance that we have had for the past several years with actual homeowner's insurance. I say attempting because this has been going on for the last four months.  There have been multiple roadblocks all along the way. We have always been polite and professional with the people over the phone, but once they were off the phone we were cursing the circumstance and wanting to take out our frustration on the customer service or insurance people.

Recently my point of view has changed and now things are moving along pretty smoothly. Some data even came up while working with the fourth insurance agent that looks like it is going to save us from needing to make a big up front out of pocket payment. This would not have happened if the first insurance agent months ago had been able to help us right away.

What caused this change? Essentially I realized that I was not showing an attitude of gratitude which I will explain shortly.

If you have read some of the other things that I have written, you probably already know that I believe very strongly in the power of positive/negative energy. What you say do and think creates a response from the universe. If what you say, do and think is positive the universe will bring you positive results. If what you say, do and think is negative the universe will bring you negative results. If you send out mixed messages the universe will bring you back mixed results.

Now about gratitude. It is easy to be grateful for the things that you have and you should be. That is awesome and positive and does tend to bring more good things to you. But what is even more powerful yet is being grateful for the things which you do not have as of yet. I know that may not make sense to you, but bear with me. Here is how it works.

First, you decide that you want something. Next you put into motion a plan to go about getting it. While you are working towards your goal, put forth your best effort in every step where your participation is required and live in faith that the thing that you are working towards will soon be yours. Be thankful as if that thing were already yours and imagine the things that you will be able to do once it is. This gratitude creates a sort of vacuum in the universe between the vision of what you want and what you have, pulling the two together until they become one.

Sometimes things do not always go according to plan though. And just today a new way of looking at obstacles has come to me. Imagine, if you will, any obstacle that comes up as the universe asking you if you are sure that this thing you envision is something that you really want. The way of saying yes it is what you want is to continue putting forth your best effort with faith that it is yours and gratitude as if it were already yours. The way of saying no is allowing your thoughts, words or deeds to become negative in any way shape or form.

Doing the latter halts all forward progress towards you and causes you to start the process of positive thinking all over. Every time you tell the universe that you do not want the things which you have asked for more and more obstacles will come up and those things will move further and further away.

Think about this. Some of the things in your vision will likely require less time and effort to achieve. Some of them will take more. And some that you think will take less end up taking more. But the fact of the matter is everything is going to take a certain amount of energy. Before you begin any process you do not know how much of each will be required. Let's say that instead of being you, you are the universe and the universe does know how much energy needs to go into each portion of your vision in order to see it realized.

Persistence

You can accomplish anything that you really really want to do. However, if what you want to do has never been done before or has been done by very few, you may need to focus every ounce of effort in your entire being for a long period of time before you achieve success. How many times have you started towards a goal and given up at the first signs of failure? Or maybe you managed to get past the first obstacle or two but by the fifth or sixth you just throw in the towel.

How many professional athletes sink every shot, score every time or win every game? Which ones have a 100% success rate? None of them. Take for instance an example from basketball. A field goal percentage of 50% is considered good. That means a player can miss half the time they take a shot and it is still a good thing. What about baseball?  A batting average of .300 is considered very good.

Now hold on a second. That means seven out of ten times at bat they strike out. Their failure rate is more than twice their success rate and they are still doing better than many other players out there.

What do you think would happen to the baseball player who struck out his first six or seven at bats and then said to his coach "hey man, this is too hard. I don't think I can do this" ? If he walked away from the game right then, he would be a failure as a baseball player. But if he just persisted through a few more attempts he would achieve his goal.

American inventor Thomas Edison often went through thousands of experiments before achieving his intended goal. If he had given up after the 1st or the tenth or even the thousandth time that he did not succeed, our modern world would be a much different place. There would probably be no electric lights and no movie theaters at the very least.

Edison though did not see any of those experiments as failures. He said he just found a whole lot of ways not to do what he was attempting to do. And each time he would change some minor thing and try again. He did not give up until he reached his goal even when other people told him he was crazy or wasting his time.

If you want to be successful in your endeavors, you get to model his behavior in your life. First decide what it is that you want. Then formulate an action plan designed to achieve that which you want. Then put the plan in motion. As things proceed challenges, breakdowns and obstacles will occur. This is natural. Nothing worth doing is easy and it is not possible for you to foresee all of the difficulties that will arise ahead of time. Do not get discouraged and quit. The key is to work through each issue one by one, molding your plan to fit the circumstances as necessary until you arrive at your goal.

Persistence leads to success. Lack of persistence guarantees failure.

Day tight

While doing some reading the other day I came across a phrase that I really liked. The subject matter was about conquering worry. The phrase was "living in day tight compartments"  or locking each day off in your mind from every other day that happens.

People tend to have fear, doubt and worry over decisions that might need to be made in the future. That worry dampens our spirits and in some cases even our physical health. When we do this, our mood darkens and we do not enjoy our life. This is not a momentary thing. It goes on from the time that we become aware that whatever issue exists until the appointed time to handle it occurs. Even worse, quite often people worry over things that are not ever even going to happen, or things where the odds of them happening are so close to zero as to be not worth the time spent pondering it. But still their lives are filled with suffering while they wait for this terrible thing to occur.

Other times we agonize over choices we have already made thinking, feeling or believing that we should have done something else. This is even worse than worrying about something that has yet to happen because there is no set time limit for how long we will continue to cause ourselves to suffer over it. Countless millions of people are constantly bringing their lives to ruin over things that have already happened or that might never happen

This is foolish and in no way useful. When you are spending your time and energy in constant worry, your ability to reason goes out the window and as a result you can no longer resolve the issues that actually come up on a day to day basis. When this happens you are forcing your past and your future to annihilate your happiness in the present. This then perpetuates the cycle.

You fail to make good decisions in the present, which then becomes your past and you then are back to berating yourself for past mistakes. You then see no point in making an effort to use the new present to make a better future. You seem doomed to failure no matter what you do.

But, at any single moment you can choose to break that cycle by mentally creating a seal on each day. Resolve to shut out everything that has gone before today or will go after except that which relates to decisions that you must make today to prepare for your future. Live in the moment, make the best decisions that you can for today and be happy with that. Let tomorrows problems wait until tomorrow. Leave the past in the past. Do not even think about them.

Worry is what happens when the mind is aware of a potentially unpleasant thing and is focused on it but not focused on coming up with a solution.Take things one day at a time and worry will vaporize like magick.

When I grow up?

What did you or do you say when people ask what you want to be when you grow up? From lots of kids I've heard answers like a firefighter, astronaut, or super hero. Very few people ever end up with the job they claimed to want as young children. When asked, I never really knew what to say. I know the point of the question is to make you think about what kind of career you will end up with, but to me, the question always just seemed so limiting.

I wanted to do everything. I wanted more time to decide. I wanted to be a child for decades so I could try a little bit of a lot of different things and not really be pushed into any one particular thing. Eventually I settled on the answer of by the time I grow up, I intend to be old, if I in fact ever grow up at all.

Kids have this sense of wonder and awe at the newness of everything. Nearly every minute that they are not being hit with some negative stimulus, they are happy. It is something that most adults lose and with it a lot of the light in their life goes away. We tend to get jaded and bitter and cynical about life and all of it's little details. Our interest in learning new things goes out the window. Once that happens we tend  to grow old and die.

Many of the oldest people in the world have attributed their long lives to being happy people. If that is true, if happiness is the key to a long life then we should do our best to keep that childlike sense of wonder alive, or to rekindle it if it has been lost.

But how would one go about doing that? One way would be to spend as much time as possible around young children. Kids in the two to seven year old range have generally not been subjected to the fears and prejudices of their parents for long enough to tarnish their natural unconditional love of nearly everyone and everything.

I know from personal experience with my son that spending just a few minutes in his presence is enough to brighten my whole day. Seeing life through his eyes, observing how he takes in new data,  how he rushes headlong with total enthusiasm into everything he chooses to do and seeing him so open and willing to share warms my heart,makes me smile and occasionally even brings out some tears of joy. It is such a beautiful thing.

Another way would be to remember being a young child. The person that you were when you believed in Santa and the Tooth Fairy and a world filled with magick is still there inside of you It never really goes away. It just gets pushed back and shoved down. In reality, adults are just taller children playing at being older people and handling responsibilities.

But if you decide to find or build a loving supportive environment where you can safely let your safeguards and walls down, you can learn to get back in touch with that inner child, the person that you really are. You can take back your happiness. And if you really want to be, you can be that person nearly all the time. We put up the walls as an automatic measure to keep us safe. With the wisdom of age, comes the experience to be open and loving with most people and put the walls back up briefly when you need to.

You can turn plain old everyday boring life in to a super awesome unbelievably fun adventure with no ordinary moments, just by shifting your perspective. In reality that is all that ever really changes. No one ever really grows up, they just find different ways of dealing with obstacles. Some people choose to become more stuffy and boring and some people choose not to.

I changed my mind. I am never growing up.

Dungeons and Dragons

Our normal every other Saturday gaming group is going to be starting up a new game on the alternate Saturdays. It is a game that is going to be a mix of the Dungeons and Dragons universe and the Disney universe. Several of the players are going to be playing established Disney characters and the others of us are making standard Dungeons and Dragons characters.

We have known about the game for several weeks now. The first session is tomorrow evening. As far as I know, most of the players have had their characters done for quite awhile.One other player and I did most of our preparation for the game today. We both had a generalized concept for what we wanted to do ahead of time. But, I have nearly thirty years of experience playing a vast array of different role-playing systems with Dungeons and Dragons being the one game I have the most knowledge about. He has only been playing for a couple of years.

The difference between the complexity level of our characters and the overall amount of work done by each of us should not, but kind of does surprise me. He is playing a paladin which is pretty much a straight up fighter with a couple of spells and some nifty abilities granted by his fealty to a cause. It is one of the easier classes to set up a character for. It would probably take me a total of maybe an hour to do including generating stats, picking out equipment, choosing necessary feats, deciding which spells to use and copying down any game relevant info about the character from the two or maybe three books that were needed.

The character that I am playing is a wizard and if you know anything about fantasy role-playing games you know wizards are a complex lot. Any class that is primarily spell focused has a lot of calculation and bookkeeping that goes along with it, even at character creation.You have to decide and keep track of all the spells that they know, which ones they have memorized, how many they can cast per day and what bonus spells they get for having high stats.

Determining all of the data associated with the casting of spells often takes longer than setting up a complete character that does not cast. And from the very beginning I knew that this character was going to take even more work. I won't go into all the details, but to do what I wanted required the source material from at least nine different books that I had in .pdf format on my hard drive as well as thirteen open tabs in Firefox on my desktop.

I knew in my head that the idea that I had in for my character was doable and that there were bits and pieces in different places to support my concept. I was cross-referencing and comparing and jotting down notes on what would and would not work and how much of what to put where. We both started around the same time. I have been done for several hours and he is still working at it. The actual writing down and creating of the character took me about an hour and a half once I knew for sure that the rules supported what I wanted to do.The difference for each of us is that I know enough about the system to know where to look for the things that I want and he does not.

I suppose as far as playing Dungeons and Dragons goes I am familiar enough with it that I could be considered an expert. And many things within this system that seem easy for me are a great struggle for a lot others. I wonder how many other areas of life in general this shows up in.

How often do we get upset at others for taking a long time to do or to figure out something that we think is "easy" and obvious?

The mind-killer pt2

But what about trained martial artists,warriors and soldiers? They train for years to know exactly what to do in practically any given situation. Surely they are not afraid of anything. Right?

Wrong. They are just as afraid in a given situation as you or I would be. But, they are confident that they have the tools and training to come out on top, to survive. Brave men are not men without fear. Brave men are men who are afraid and move ahead with what needs to be done anyways. Fear is a healthy thing until such point as it prevents you from acting. And then it must be defeated.

How does is this done you ask? The answer is somewhat cryptically given above in the Litany Against Fear. "I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me."

What does this mean? Well the first part is pretty simple. You face it. You do not conquer your fear by running from it, avoiding it or hiding from it. All that does is give the fear more power and make it harder to deal with next time. No. To conquer your fear you must first acknowledge it. Then you must pull the fear towards you, look at it from every angle and surround yourself with it. Immerse yourself fully in the thing that you fear.  Think about all of the possible outcomes you can see and come up with the rudiments of a plan about what you will do in each of those circumstances. Next you must accept the possibility that each one of those things may happen. And finally you set the fear aside and move on with whatever it is that needs doing.

Some of your fears once looked at in this manner will disappear entirely as you realize that the likelihood of the thing you feared coming to pass is so ridiculously low as to be nearly non-existent. Or you may realize that the thing that you were so afraid of might not be so bad after all. Other times your fear, once looked at with the full power of your logic and reasoning will simply instead become caution, a thing that is part of you but does not prevent you from acting.

And thus we have the last part of the Litany. "Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain". The Litany Against Fear was designed to allow those who might otherwise be paralyzed with fear to be able to act in some pretty difficult and scary circumstances.  The ending indicates that once dealt with the fear will disappear.

While it is a very empowering idea it is not completely accurate without a slight alteration in viewpoint. Sometimes the thing you fear is legitimate and real and dealing with it does not make it less so. Many fears do not and should not ever go away. You can minimize the chances of the thing you fear coming to pass but the possibility should still remain within your mind so that you do not get careless. I think it would be more correct to say that the ability that the fear has to control you disappears. The fear is no longer an enormous external entity looming in front of you. It becomes an internal thing that you control.

 And then "Only I will remain" becomes accurate.

The mind-killer pt1

LITANY AGAINST FEAR

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

The preceding was a quote from Frank Herbert's fictional book series Dune.

The mind killer. While a bit overly dramatic it is very close to the truth. Often while we are fearful our mind seems to shut down and nothing but the fear remains. Adrenaline begins to pump and we prepare for what is called fight or flight.

In the early days of man we were but an animal, always acting on instinct.  Very little separated us from the other animals. And fear was part of our instincts that helped to keep us safe. At some point though, our minds developed to the point where reason was possible. We no longer always had to rely on instinct to keep us alive. In fact, we found that there were times and places that our instincts held us back from making improvements. So, we advanced to the point where we now use a combination of animal instinct and logical reasoning.  Each has their place and each has their own benefits and weaknesses.

The animal side: You give in to the fear and let your instincts take over hoping they will be enough. The fight or flight instinct is one way that fear can help keep you alive. If the thing that you are afraid of is something that you believe can not be defeated, a larger more vicious animal for instance you may decide to run from it. If it is something you think you might be able to beat you stay and prepare to fight using whatever means necessary to scare off or kill the enemy. No thinking is happening here just reacting. You are lashing out and attacking wildly. But what happens when your fear is so great that it completely paralyzes you in both mind and body? You automatically lose.

The logical side: You may be able to reason with the person or thing that you are afraid of. Perhaps you can trap it or use some part of the environment that you are in to get some sort of edge to allow you to come out on top. You still have the options of fight or flight but using your ability to reason gives you other options to use instead or alongside them. When using logic, you can be running and coming up with a plan instead of just running in terror with no hope but to get away. If a lion jumps out at you from a bush only a couple of feet away from you and you stand there and take the time to reason out the pro's and con's of the situation you will likely end up dead.

For the most part, the animal instincts are good to keep us alive when there is no time to use the power of our minds to come up with a workable solution. Fear is a natural healthy part of our lives. Only those who are stupid or insane have no fear at all.

Avoid the resistance

Most people have a tendency to resist that which is new. Why?

There are many different answers, but on the whole, they pretty much boil down to fear. What is old or traditional is something familiar. It can be counted on quantified and measured. Things that have been done a certain way for a long period of time create patterns and routines in the lives of the people that do them that certain way. Pathways get ingrained in the minds of people following tradition.

The "normal" way that people do things is something they are comfortable with because they know exactly what to expect as a result. It usually does not really matter to them that the result is inefficient, painful, difficult or only just barely gets the job done.

Quite, often a logical thinking person can point out all kinds of flaws in the "normal" way, things that actually make the thing more of a burden than it needs to be. Even if you can prove that the new way to do a thing is better in every way most people will still resist it kicking and screaming and look for every reason to hold onto tradition.

Again, this is due to fear. People do not fear that which they are used to, even if what they are used to is slowly killing them over time. What they fear is the unknown. They fear that your new way will somehow be much worse than the old way even if all the logic in the world points the other way. While you may be able to show a person reams of facts and figures showing them how a new way of doing things would benefit them, until they actually experience the benefits it is not and often can not be perceived as real to them.

In their minds what is known, no matter how hazardous it may actually be to them, is "safe" and what is unknown is not. This may seem like a pretty stupid thing to say until you realize that their definition of safe is not the standard dictionary definition. What people clinging to old ways of doing things mean by safe is something with which they are familiar enough to be able to accurately weigh the pro's and con's in any given situation having to do with that thing. The new way is something with which they have no familiarity at all. There is no data, from their personal experiences, for which they can use to calculate on their own the good and bad of the new thing. All they have is your word and their own suspicion and pessimism. And unfortunately for them suspicion and pessimism usually win out over faith in other people.

The problem with tradition is that there is familiarity but no room for improvement and no room for growth. And where there is no growth there is only stagnation and death.

We need new things in our lives to help us to grow and improve. We get to have new ways of doing things that allow us to become more than we are, to fill in bigger and bigger places in the world. New more efficient ways of doing things allow us to do better in school and business and to have more free time. New ways of handling relationships allow us to enjoy more of the time that we do get to spend with the people we love, rather than fighting with them all the time.

If you do the same things you have always done, you will have the same things you have always had. If your life is exactly the way you want it to be maybe you do not need to change a thing. Perhaps, what you are doing is working for you. But if you are not happy with your life, you can choose to keep on suffering. Or you can choose to change it. But you will not be able to change it by sticking to old ways of doing things. In order to change your life for the better, you get to get over your fear and do something new.

Working together

I was listening to some friends playing an online game together earlier and through the bantering and bickering that was flowing back and forth it seemed that they were not doing all that well. They did manage to win the game, but only because they were playing against a remarkably stupid computer AI. Against real people their overall lack of strategy and tactics would likely have fallen flat. Just because there were several of them on the same team it did not mean that they were playing as a team.

What do I mean by this? At the beginning of the game they were all placed on the same team but they each had their own idea of what a good way to win the game was. And each was putting into play their own plan for how to make that happen. The problem with this is that their plans were mutually exclusive. Each plan called for each person to  be in a different location than the one that every other plan called for.So far we have not learned a way to be in two or more locations at once, so while any one play may have worked all of them together were bound to fail.

To work together as an effective team only one overall plan could be enacted. Elements from several of them could have been incorporated as long as they did not count on any one person being in two locations at the same time.

What should have happened before the game is that one person should have been selected as leader and everyone should have agreed to follow that person's instructions. It is not possible to have five different leaders on a five person team because you can only follow one set of instructions at a time. A team will almost always beat a group of individuals each doing their own thing.

One may not always agree with the plan and strategy of the leader but if you do not follow it, it can not work. It may not anyways, but if you do not follow the plan you will never know. If you follow it and it does not work, at least you are not to blame for the failure. Then afterwards you can take your turn as leader and show why your way may be better.By each taking a turn leading the team, you can find out who is best suited for leading the group. And if you each have an open mind, you can all improve your skills by learning from one another.

Also before the game started strategy and goals should have been discussed. To be a successful part of a team one must be aware of their role and what is expected of them before game time. Each person needs to know what is expected of them at any given moment. Knowing ahead of time how the game works and how the opponent is likely to respond in a given situation is good also useful. That way contingencies can be set up, on the fly, for the major changes that may need to be made to the overall plan, in order to ensure victory.

To sum up, being part of a successful team is about having a good leader, constructing a flexible plan, following instructions from the leader even if you disagree with them and most of all working together.

Are you a grown up?

What is an adult? To many different people the question could be answered many different ways. As I am sure you will see, my definition is pretty strict and excludes a lot of people.

According to dictionary.com an adult is a person who "is fully grown or developed or of age".  Saying that a person who is any one of these three things is an adult does not seem right to me. I believe that you must have all three of these things in order to be an adult.

I look at the term fully grown and I think physical development. Developed makes me think of mental development. And age as a metric seems to be a generalized yardstick saying by x point in life a person should have had y number of experiences. Now how about some examples that show why I think you need all three of these traits in order to be considered an adult.

To start with, look at the character played by Tom Hanks in the movie Big. In the beginning he is a child. Something happens and one day he wakes up in the body of a fully grown male of the human race. At first this seems awesome because it lets him have access to many parts of life that a child is not allowed to take part in.

But, if you have seen the movie, I am sure you will agree that although he is a fully grown person he is certainly not an adult. His true self, the one inside the body of the adult, has not developed mentally to the point where he can understand many of the subtle intricacies that lead to knowing what the right and wrong choice in a given situation are. And he is not old enough to have collected enough experiences to have learned by watching the choices of others what the right or wrong thing to do is.

How about age alone as a metric for choosing whether or not a person is an adult? There are several different numbers that are used to decide who is an adult and who is not. For now let's just pick one. Say 18 is the age of adulthood. Some people as they are being raised are extremely worldly and streetwise and know many things about how to survive and get along with others by the time they are in their early teens. Others at 25 or even older have none of this knowledge and experience because they are and have been sheltered by relatives who feel that they are keeping them safe by shielding them from reality. The streetwise teen in their not fully developed body can handle themselves in situations where the "adult" would curl up in a corner and cry or worse yet, not even make it out alive. Is it really fair to call the worldly teen a child but call the sheltered 25 year old an adult?

And last but not least, what about the person that physically has quite a bit of growing to do and is still under the "age" of adult hood but who has a fully developed mind? Persons like the fictional character of "Doogie Hauser", are they adults? Not hardly.

To be an adult a person must be fully grown, have a well developed mind and be old enough to have had enough experiences with life that they can survive in a reasonable manner. For most people this definition would be enough. I add two more things to the definition which will cause the exclusion of a great many people.

I also believe that in order for a person to be an adult, they must be able to differentiate between what they want to do in a given situation and what is right to do in that situation. And, most of the time, they must be mature and responsible enough to make the right choice.

Value

Part of being a successful person, that other people want to be around, is in them being able to obtain something of value from you. If you have nothing the other person values then there is no reason for them to approach you or to stay around you once they are in your presence. Now, in a strictly business sense, this value would be gained by purchasing something that you have that they want.

When making a sale there are several things that help determine if it is a good deal or not. Value is one of them. In order to make a profit you have to charge the customer a fair rate for the product. But more importantly in order for them to feel good about the sale, you have to provide them more in use value than you take from them in cash value.  What does this mean?

For a good number of years I have played a collectible card game called Magic the Gathering. You can buy a starter deck of 60 Magic cards for around ten dollars, with each card costing you around 17 cents. That seems like a pretty good deal. But when all is said and done you are probably not going to get a good feel for the game with only those cards. You won't have enough to make a second deck and play against some friends. You will probably get bored with the starter deck after a few plays and it will just sit somewhere collecting dust. You might get a couple of hours of enjoyment out of the starter deck and then be done with it. A person selling you a single starter deck at ten dollars is giving you good cash value but poor use value.

Now on other hand, let's say, the salesperson talks you into buying a booster box of 540 magic cards for 100 dollars. Each card now is costing you around 18 and a half cents. Not a big difference but at first it still seems like you might be getting less value out of the deal. However, with this many cards you will have the ability to make several different decks, so you can invite some friends over to play. Also you will have enough cards left over to trade some cards out for others when new ideas come to you. You can also find other people that have Magic cards and trade some of the cards you are not using for cards that they do not need. With the booster box of cards you have way more options. It will quite likely take you more time to open the cards, sort them, figure out what you got, come up with several deck ideas and build a single deck than the total amount of time you would have spent playing with the single starter deck. You could possibly get hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of this $100 investment.

Let's compare. $10 for less than 5 hours of enjoyment means paying more than $2 per hour for your entertainment. $100 for more than 200 hours of enjoyment means paying less then $0.50 per hour of entertainment.

A high use value on a thing means that what you are actually charging them is very little compared to the amount that they will use and enjoy that thing. If you want to be successful in business you must always give a person a higher use value than the cash value that you charge for the thing.

The same goes for the non-business parts of life as well. If you want others to value the time that they spend around you, you must give them more in use value than you take away from them in time spent with you. People who make this concept a regular part of their life give increase to all those around them and others are automatically drawn to them.

Imagination

By rather serious minded people it is often called cloud gazing or staring at your belly button. They say, your imagination will not get you anywhere. It is a waste of time. You need to pay attention and stay focused.

Perhaps those very same people have not ever heard of inventors like Thomas Edison or the Wright brothers. The Wright brothers gave us the ability to travel across the country in just a few hours. Edison invented hundreds of different things including the light bulb, the phonograph, the motion picture camera,the voting machine and nickel-iron batteries, just to name a few.

Other people with great minds have used their imagination to take those ideas and turn them into things that we use everyday. Cellphones, movie theaters, cd players and rechargeable batteries would not be if not for people who came after Edison looking at the world and imagining how they could make it better. Without imagination we would not have many of the modern conveniences that people are so strongly attached to. Things that we often take for granted are the direct result of people who dared to dream of a better way.

People used to believe that the world was flat and if you sailed too far you would just fall off. If not for Christopher Columbus and other like minded dreamers there would likely have never been English colonists settled on the east coast of what we now call America. Christopher Columbus believed that the world was round. He could imagine it even though so many in his day could not. He believed that he had sailed around the world to India which is one of the reasons why native Americans are called Indians. It turns out he was right about the world being round, he just hadn't sailed far enough to reach India.

If certain people living in America had never suffered under the harsh tyranny of the English king and imagined a way to make things better, the United States of America would never have been created. We would still be a colony under British rule. If the leaders of our newly forming country had not used their imaginations to compare the life they had with the life they wanted, the Declaration of Independence could not have been written and neither could the Constitution.
Every successful business started out at one time as a vision in the mind of the potential owner of such a business. And what is a vision but a fully fleshed out plan that one imagines.

Nothing worthwhile ever gets done without first there being a plan formed in the imagination of the one who ends up doing that worthwhile thing. It is important to note however that imagination alone is not enough. One must also have the passion, the drive to see through the plan that they have dreamed up.

Dreaming is the key to unlocking our power of creativity. Imagination, backed up by personal action is how we transform the world we have into the world we want. So, while listening to a lecture may not be the most appropriate time to daydream, I say to you, ignore those who say that imagination is useless. It is in fact one of the most useful tools with which a person can be equipped.

What is right?

We talk about working together to solve problems. We say that you should work with others to create win-win situations. But how many right answers can there possibly be in a given situation? It seems that our instinct is to say that there is only one right way and the rest of the ways are wrong.

That is not usually true though. Normally there are literally thousands or more possible options in any given circumstance. We just subconsciously decide that most of them are not "real" options.What makes a potential solution good or bad depends on what criterion and limitations we put on the circumstance.

For example let's say that you decide that you have been doing way too many loads of laundry each week. One way to avoid needing to do so much laundry is simply to not wear clothing two days out of the week. This solution is possible, but probably is not feasible if you need to interact with the rest of the world during those two days. You could also decide to wear each set of clothes twice before washing them. Or perhaps you could donate or throw your clothing away after a single use so that washing it never becomes an issue. Maybe you could put more clothing in each load thus decreasing the overall amount of loads that need doing. All are possible, but for different reasons either fit your needs or do not.The circumstances surrounding the issue will usually assist you in eliminating ideas until you are down to a simple choice of A vs B.

The truth of the matter is there really are a lot of solutions. We just shoot most of them down right away. It is part of our natural decision making process that we eliminate the outlandish crazy ideas, the bad ideas and even some of the reasonably good ideas in favor of what we think the "best" idea is. This in and of itself is not so bad.

When it becomes an issue is when we are not the only person involved in a given circumstance. Often what we think is the best idea is the one that works best for us. Then what the other person thinks is the best idea is the one that works the best for them. We then each campaign for our idea and often do not understand the other person's point of view. At this point an argument normally ensues and any hope of productivity goes out the window.

Preventing this is actually pretty simple. All you need to do is this.  Before beginning the process of narrowing down what choices will or won't work and what choices are feasible vs which are just plain silly, each person should voice their concerns about the issue. Then once each person involved understands the concerns of all involved, brainstorming can occur to come up with solutions that adequately handle all the concerns and still manage to solve the problem.

Keep in mind that it helps to be flexible when possible. Others will be more willing to make agreements that are slightly less to their benefit if they see that you are willing to do the same. Sometimes a little bit of compromise in one circumstance will go a long way towards you getting exactly what you want in the next negotiation.

Impossible resolution

A lot of my time and energy get spent encouraging others, through my actions and words, both written and spoken, to work with others whenever possible.  Teamwork and cooperation are big catch-phrases for me. It is my belief that the greatest works of which mankind is capable are those that happen when we lock arms with others for a common purpose. I believe in being open and vulnerable and encourage others to do the same. I have said that the soft way is nearly always the best way but acknowledged that it does not always work.

So, you might be wondering when I think the hard way is the way to go. Most of the time if you find out what the other person is most concerned about in a given situation a way to work together can be found. Over ninety percent of the time, the calm, peaceful, resourceful, problem solving way will be successful.

Essentially, the hard way is the answer when all other possible avenues have been explored and shut down by the other party in the discussion or negotiation. Sometimes this will take many hours or even days to occur after dozens or possibly hundreds of ideas have come up and been discarded. Sometimes it will happen right away. You will begin a discussion about the issue you have and the other person may tell you in no uncertain terms that they are not willing to work with you to find a solution.

Or you may not even get to the point of a discussion. Take for example a terrorist who has decided that his way of life and mine are mutually exclusive who makes the declaration that he intends to kill all people who live my way of life. I would not attempt a conversation with such a person. Were such a person in front of me, I would deem it my right and my duty to kill him before he killed me or those I care about. Afterwards, I would greatly regret the necessity of the act, but I would not grieve for the death of his point of view.

A person who is unwilling to work with you is telling you that they have no concern whatsoever for your cares or comfort. It matters not to them how much you suffer. When the other person decides that they are unwilling to cooperate no matter what you do, that is the point where it becomes impossible to create a win-win situation. And that is when I see no problem with laying down the law and telling the other person exactly what to expect if they continue to be the source of the issue that you had been hoping to resolve.

Personally, I tend to do my best to avoid people that have that kind of behavior, but I realize it is not always possible, especially if it is a work associate. In a case like that, I would remain polite and civil but keep contact to a minimum while being extra diligent in my efforts to not let the things that person says or does be taken personally.