The best role model

What is a role model? A role model is a person that has a trait or collection of traits that we admire. They have in their life things that we would like to have in our own.

Some of the most obvious examples of role models would be celebrities, and wealthy people. Most of us would like to have enough money to be able to have the freedom to do what we want when we want. Rich people have that so we admire, desire and in some ways pay homage to them. Likewise sports icons are the best at what they do. We want to be like them so we dress like them, style our hair like they do and do what we can to be as much like them as possible, even if we aren't so good at the thing we actually admire them for.

The same thing happens with movie stars. We see traits in either the actor themselves or the characters that they portray that we want and we strive to be just like them in one or more ways. Musicians are the same way. There is something about your favorite musician that you envy. It might be their charismatic personality, an awesome voice, or simply their record sales, but there is something about them that you wish was in your life.

There are more different role models than there are enviable traits to emulate. In fact, in some way, every person is a role model for at least one other person. Whether you are a sibling, parent, teacher, friend, lover,confidante, or co-worker, other people look up to you, maybe in one way, perhaps in many.

This is especially so where children are concerned. They are like little sponges that absorb everything they see and hear. Even if they do not understand what is going on. What they see and hear becomes part of what they believe is normal and right.They often have no frame of reference to compare a person's actions to.

Unless you are completely alone, all the time, other people interact with you and see what kind of person you are by the things that you say and do. We show others by what we say and do and how we go about doing it what we think is right and what we think is wrong. The things that we do and the things that we put up with show others what is right and acceptable to do. And the things that we do not do and that we will not put up with are the things that we are showing others, just by our way of being, is wrong and not acceptable.

We need to be on our best behavior all the time. No that's not quite right. We need to be our best behaviors, all the time. The former statement implies that it is just an act. The latter shows that our behavior is a reflection of who we are.

The reason we need to be the very best role models we can possibly be is two-fold. First, always doing your best, is the only way to make sure that you get the most and the best out of life. And second, it leads all of the people that are going to follow you, whether you want them to or not, down the right path.

Who would narrate the story of your life?

So while browsing the internet the other day, I ran into a question that at first made me kind of chuckle just a little bit. Then after a bit more thought it had me laughing so hard I almost fell out of my chair, especially when I saw a reply that so strongly matched what I was thinking on the subject.

The question was asked, who would you rather have narrate your life, Morgan Freeman or Samuel L Jackson? In case you've been living under a rock for the last few decade and don't know who they are, both men are well respected black actors that have each carved out their own niche in Hollywood. They have both played multiple completely different roles, but there is something special about their character, their personality that goes into each role they take on.

Morgan Freeman has played such varied roles as God, Batman's butler and a chauffeur for a cranky old lady. Samuel L Jackson has been a gangster, a slave and a jedi among others.

If Morgan Freeman were describing your life his voice would be calm, smooth and refined. It would be something like this. He led a good life, with many exciting times. Resources may have been few but he always did the best he could with what he had.

If Samuel L Jackson were narrating your life it would be high energy, full of excitement and expletives. It would go more like this. Holy Sh**! You motha fu***s are not gonna  believe the sh** this cat did on a daily basis. This crazy son of a b***h was off the chain!

The funny part is that I can hear both of their voices in my head reciting what I wrote and I have to agree with the person that said Samuel L Jackson would have to narrate the story of their life because there were too many instances of the word mother fu**** needed to describe their life.

I am sure that at one point or another in his life a few expletives have passed the lips of Morgan Freeman. Just as I am sure that Samuel L Jackson has been smooth and refined. And it's not that either person couldn't read words meant for the other. It's just that imagining one talking and acting like the other seems really unnatural.

When my life is through I want the narration of my life to be done in a way that is powerful and vibrant, in your face and honest. Both would do the job justice. They would each be very entertaining and include all the pertinent facts. Morgan Freeman's version while very creatively described would probably be simply the facts and nothing more. But I think I would rather listen to Mr Jackson's version of events.

Which of the two would you rather have narrate your life? Or is there someone else that you think would do a better job or would be more appropriate to describe your life?

Meditation simple easy and not bizarre

It somewhat amuses me that meditation is something that is popular in New Age circles and is often treated as just that, something new.  But, according to Hindu scripture meditation in one form or another has been around since about 3000 BC.

The practice of meditation is more common in eastern type philosophies, which I guess explains why we tend to treat it as a new thing. A little over two hundred years ago there was no Unites States and most of our founding fathers were a little too concerned over survival to spend much time doing anything else. Now that life is a bit more stable here we have time to branch out and see many of the things we were missing out on while our country was in its infancy.

Throughout the ages meditation has been used for various things, from supposedly controlling the gods, to becoming one with the universe and everything in between. There are many different types or styles of meditation and perhaps some funny picture of monks in weird costumes chanting while holding some ridiculous pose enters your mind whenever someone mentions meditation. But really all you need to meditate is a few minutes to yourself and relative quiet.

If you have no intention of making the gods your puppets or even increasing your awareness to the level where you can see and feel everything around you, what good is meditation? I am glad you asked. In today's modern hectic world, meditation is the perfect way to take a little time out to recharge and de-stress before returning to your regular schedule. The following exercise is a little simple and may not be the most powerful form of meditation but it involves no chanting or funny hats.

Find a place where you can be alone for a few minutes, or at the very least where you will not be bothered by others. Then close your eyes and relax your body. Feel the tension in your muscles begin to drain away as you breathe slowly and deeply. Hold each breath for a slow three count before letting it back out. 

After ten long slow deep breaths, completely empty your mind and focus on nothing for a few minutes. If you have a hard time emptying your mind completely, focus on an image of a playing card, perhaps the Jack of Diamonds. See the image of that card and exclude everything else from your mind. Continue breathing deeply and slowly and after each breath imagine a laser beam shoots across and removes an inch from the card in front of you. Keep holding that image in your mind. With each breath another inch disappears until the whole card is gone. Then hold that image of nothingness for a few minutes.

When you are ready, open your eyes, resume normal breathing and return to your day. If you make this practice a habit, I guarantee the overall level of stress in your life will go down tremendously and you will find less frustration as a result.

Are you responsible for what happens in your life? Pt2

A bit more about responsibility in your life. First some easy questions.

Would you agree, if I said, in general, successful people are responsible people and not victims?

Would you agree, if I said, in general, successful people make things happen and things don't often happen to them?

Do you want to be a successful person?

So you want to be a successful person and you see that most successful people are responsible people?

Then you agree that there is value in not being a victim?

Now you don't get to be both in life, you are either a victim or you are not. The choice is, you happen to life or life happens to you.

What we say and how we say it give an indication as to whether we are playing the victim game or not. The victim will say the cop wrote me a ticket. The empowered person will say I got a ticket or better yet I earned a ticket. Both will tell you why. One to complain about it, the other just to describe the event. The first example distances oneself from what happened and makes it about the officer. The second puts the blame squarely where it belongs with the receiver of the ticket.

Do you see yourself as a responsible person?

Would you like to learn to take more control of your life and to be able to better steer events towards turning out more beneficial to you?

The first step to doing that is realizing where you are currently. Out of every ten things that happen in your life, how many do you actually own up to? Out of every ten events in your life how many do you make happen and how many happen to you? On a scale of 1-10, how responsible are you for what goes on in your life? All three questions are worded differently but mean the same thing.

Take a few minutes and rate yourself. Think of your general habits and patterns. Do you find yourself often blaming other people or life in general for things that happen and saying that they happen to you? Does it rain? Or does it rain on you?

If something happens that you realize you could do something about and you choose not to, if it turns out negatively for you, that is an example of you acting like an idiot and not an example of you being a victim.

A one means you are a complete victim, with no control over your life. Everything simply happens to you whether you want it to or not. And a ten means the opposite. You take complete responsibility for everything that happens. You realize that you control what happens by how you respond and by what you choose to participate in and what you do not. A five means you have a fair amount of both in your life.

Alright, so now you have your personal responsibility rating. Now, go ask three other people that know you very well and whose opinions you trust how they would rate your willingness to take responsibility for the things that happen in your life, on a 1-10 scale.

Did those other people rate you about the same as you rated yourself?

And finally an exercise to assist you in taking more control and responsibility for the things that happen in your life.

For the next week, set aside some time at the end of each day before going to sleep, ten to thirty minutes should be enough time. During that time, think of everything that happened during the day, from the moment you woke up until the moment you start this exercise. For each thing that happened, think about and find three things you could have done to make the end result different. Find one thing you could have done to make the result better, one different thing you could have done to get about the same result and one thing you could have done to make the result worse, no matter how good or bad things actually turned out for you.

The purpose of this is to show you that there is always always always something you can do to change the outcome of events. Of course you can't change things that are in the past. But going over what has happened in the past can assist us in coming up with better ways of handling things in the future.

Are you responsible for what happens in your life? Pt1

The following actually occurred this past Friday afternoon. Names have been changed to letters for anonymity.

Comcast sent out a technician to troubleshoot the internet problems that we have been having. As part of his troubleshooting he needed to test all of the coaxial cables for line noise. We all live together in a big house, but all have separate schedules. Sometimes we do not know who is home or awake or what their general status is.

One of the rooms the technician needed to get into was behind a closed door. He asked if it was alright to go in and check the line in that room. This sequence of events is what happened as a result.

Person A asked person B if person C was home. Person B said they did not know. Person A asked person B to check. Person B checked the door to person C's room, found it unlocked, opened it looked in and said person C was sleeping. Person A replied that was not useful information and that something more would need to be done. Person B then went over to the sleeping person C and woke them up.

Person C was understandably upset, one about being woken up in general, and even more upset at being woken up by person B standing next to their bed and calling their name. Person C felt that their privacy was being invaded due to the fact that person B did not even bother to knock before coming into their room.

Not surprisingly, an argument started, it was minor and not very heated. But, still, it was enough that the Comcast guy did not get to test the line that day.

Person C blamed person B for the circumstance. Person B claimed to just be following directions and blamed Person A. Person A admitted responsibility for the situation. But who was really responsible for the end result of the Comcast representative not testing the line? Was it person A, B,C, or was it the Comcast tech?

It's actually a trick question. The correct answer is, it is everyone's responsibility. A,B,C, the Comcast tech, every person that observed what happened and even those that did not. The whole world is responsible for everything that happens, everywhere, if they could have taken an action that would have made things different, no matter how indirect or not connected that action might be.

Person A could have stopped Person B from entering Person C's room without knocking. Person B could have used common sense and not entered without knocking, Person C could have locked their door before going to sleep, or could have been awake or not home. The guy from Comcast could have found another way to test the line that did not involve going into that room.

Comcast, in general, is responsible for the trouble that we are having with our internet because if they did not exist we would not have their service and thus we could not have an issue with our Comcast internet service. AT&T is responsible for this circumstance as well, because if they provided a better service we would use it. It was our choice to go with the internet service provided by Comcast. But it is every other company out there's choice not to provide better internet than Comcast does.

One might say well what about all the Chinese and Indian people out there that are half a world away from you? They aren't responsible for this are they? Actually, yes they are. Any one of them could invent the next new bit of technology that makes internet usage through coaxial cable obsolete. Every man woman and child, everywhere, that has failed to do so is responsible for the problems that we have with the internet in our home. If there were no planet Earth we would not have the exact problem we have here and now with our internet. Therefore everyone that has not blown up the Earth has contributed to us still having trouble with our Comcast based internet service.

Am I suggesting that anyone should destroy our planet? No, not, even slightly. I am just using it as an example to say that anyone and everyone could change our circumstance and that everyone that does not, is responsible for the circumstance continuing to exist

A person can take the victim stance and blame everyone else but the fact of the matter is that they are responsible for what happens in their lives even if they choose to ignore or deny it. Also, there is no such thing as partial responsibility. Persons A,B,C and the Comcast tech are not each 25% responsible for what happened. They are each jointly and severally 100% responsible for the outcome because any one of them could have taken an action to change the outcome and none of them did.

Bill Gates. Not a monster

A couple of decades ago, when all I knew about him was that he was founder of Microsoft and the man primarily responsible for the development of one of the most despised yet widely used pieces of software on Earth(yes Windows), I had the opinion that Bill Gates was nothing but a money grubbing power hungry douche bag.

He often looked foolish when product demos would fail spectacularly or he would say things that just did not make any sense to a person grounded in reality. So after awhile, I added idiot to the list of adjectives that I would use to describe Mr Gates. He may have been one of the richest people in the world but who cares about that?

In my opinion, if you aren't making the world a better place to be you are taking up valuable space that could be put to better use. Now in all fairness, my connection to current events is often...limited? special? non-existent? So, much of what I had heard about Bill Gates was just that, hearsay. A friend or family member would describe something they had heard or seen that he said or did and would provide commentary and I would form an opinion based on their third hand information.

At one point someone mentioned to me that he was donating a portion of his wealth to charity. When I heard that I thought, no big deal lots of wealthy people give money away. They don't really care about making a difference. They just want a tax break. Then I found out that Bill Gates has given over a third of his wealth away, more than 28 billion dollars. That caused me to change my thinking and to re-evaluate this person.

A greedy, power hungry jerk does not just give up that kind of cash. The mindset of a control freak is that more and more is always needed. And thinking about others and their welfare is just not in the cards. After doing some research of my own and not relying on other people's impressions of him It seems that many of the things that I thought about him were simply untrue.

One of the primary reasons that he stepped down from Microsoft was to be able to spend more time focused on the charity that he and his wife Melinda set up. I have been following him off and on through linkedin for awhile now. He recently posted a short bit describing a much longer piece that he and Melinda did debunking three of the major myths about foreign aid. He goes into detail about just how off the mark most people's thoughts about foreign aid really are. I have to admit before reading it, I was just as guilty of believing those myths.

Up until this point I have been taking the word of people who really had no better idea of how large scale charity contributions work than I do. But this is something that he has been doing for years now in a big way and directly hands on. He has been to many of the small villages and town that his foundation provides the aid to. He has worked directly with the recipients of that aid and is in a position to know where the money does and does not go.

It is really great stuff. I implore you to read it. The facts he presents are seriously powerful. He talks about the end of third world countries forever, not by destruction but through growth. It's really awesome.

http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/?cid=bg_li_ll0_012111#section=home

Dance puppet. Dance!

You probably like to see yourself as someone that is pretty cool and collected, someone that others can't manipulate or control. After all, you don't go out and buy everything you see in a TV commercial do you?

But let someone call your parentage into question or sling some racial slur your way and suddenly you are all over them like white on rice. Why? They are sending arrows your way hoping to cause a wound. Why let them control your actions? What another person says about you only has the power to injure you if you let it. Just ignore the intended barb and you will find that it bounces off of you. If you fight against it, it will pierce your skin and they will be successful.

Other people get off on being able to control you. It makes their day to know they got the intended reaction from you. Why give it to them? The only way a person attempting to manipulate you can control your actions is if you play along. Why give them that power over you?

 By nature, I am a pretty peaceful guy. In fact, I like to think of myself as a pacifist. And in a world where the strong never preyed upon the weak, where people did not need others to defend them, I am sure I would be.

But, if someone comes after my wife or my son with the intent to cause physical harm, I will kill that person. It will be violent and chaotic and bloody And for a very long time afterwards I will carry a piece of that person around with me to show others what happened to the last guy that tried to harm my family.

So sue me. It's a button, a big flaming button ten feet wide. It's a button that others can use to control me. Push that button and I will dance like a puppet on a string. That particular stimulus will cause a very specific, very predictable response.

Anyone not intending to maim or murder my family though generally has a pretty hard time getting my goat. Is it because I am so unobservant that I don't notice others saying catty disrespectful things? Hardly. Is it because my life and way of being are so flawless that they can find nothing mean to say? Okay,  I can't even say that out loud with a straight face, really, I tried.

It's because I know the truth about who and what I am. What others think or say about me does not change that in the slightest. Another person's opinion of me isn't me. Only I am me. Whether what a person says about me is kind or disrespectful, I do my best to acknowledge their opinion and then get on with my life. The negative gets ignored. The positive might cause me to smile but that's about it.

And I am no better than you are. With a little observance and some self-discipline you too can become immune to all of the verbal weapons your enemies may wield.

I can't Let it Go

A little over a week ago we went and saw the movie Frozen. It's based on a story by Hans Christian Anderson. And by based on I mean if you have read the book there's a couple of characters that you might recognize in the movie. It's actually so different as to be ridiculous. The book is much more of an acid trip and the movie actually, kinda, makes sense, as long as you believe in both magick and the power of true love.

The point here is that even though the movie experience was over a week ago, the song Let it Go, is still rolling around in my head. I can't seem to get rid of it. But I don't really mind since the singer has a strong, powerful, beautiful voice and the song is very empowering.

We don't really get to directly pick what our subconscious mind focuses on. However, if Let it Go had a negative message or was filled with violent imagery then I would put in some serious effort to remove it from my mind.

Why? One because I like to think about happy positive things and two because what you focus on you tend to bring about in your life. You might say it's just a song, how much damage can it do? Well, it has been proven through multiple scientific studies that your mind can not tell the difference between an action you have taken and something that you have vividly imagined. And what is a song but something that you vividly imagine??

Or how about TV? Do you realize just how much violence, sadness and overall negativity are on television today? Most people relate somewhat to the TV that they watch. We tend to put ourselves into the shoes of at least one of the characters on whatever show it is. And then we react subconsciously as if the events were happening to us. Consciously we know it's not real, but we put ourselves through the experience anyways.

We program ourselves for the types of things that we want in our lives. The average person comes home and immediately either turns on some music or the television just to have something going on in the background while they go about their evening routine. Our conscious mind pays no attention to what is going on in the background, but our subconscious does. And since our subconscious mind makes all the choices for things like our self esteem and our outlook on the world shouldn't we want to fill it up with positive things rather than negative?

We can't pick what our subconscious mind focuses on but we can give it more good targets than bad. What kinds of things are there to watch out for? Violent imagery on TV, country music or gangster rap and believe it or not the news. It hardly ever has anything good to say. It's all about who is getting shot up or who is stealing from who, generally painting a bleak picture of life in this world.

Anything that focuses on the horrors of war, poverty, sickness, crime, greed, pain or loss should be things that we avoid feeding our subconscious mind in general, but especially just before bed or right after we wake up, as this is when our minds are most impressionable.

I am not saying don't listen to music or watch TV. But listen to and watch things that are uplifting and inspiring. There is nothing wrong with adversity. It is required for growth. However make what you focus on triumph over adversity rather than failure. That way you program your mind for success.

Anti- procrastination song

Why is it that we hardly ever get done all of the things that we want to do in a day? Believe it or not, it is because we have trained ourselves not to.

We talked the other day about habits. While by nature we may have a fair number of good habits we tend to have more bad than good. That is of course until we train ourselves to have more good than bad.Training ourselves to have more good habits is what enlightenment, self improvement and in fact success in general are all about.

The biggest bad habit that I have seen within myself and that I see mirrored in other people is procrastination, but maybe not the way you normally think about that word. Yes, we are all guilty of having this one thing in front of us that we don't want to do and consciously or otherwise looking for anything else to do instead.

But that is not exactly what I am talking about. What I do is a little less direct. My pattern tends to be more along the lines of putting everything off because I am just not ready to get started yet. I want to just accomplish this one more thing in a game I am playing or catch the end of the anime that I started watching. And then there's just one more thing and one more thing and before I know it my day is more than half over and nothing is done.

Personally, I do some of my best work when I am under pressure and running out of time. I know this and tend to use that fact against myself as a reason why it's okay to not get started until I only have five hours left to do twelve hours worth of work. But the problem with this is that sometimes unexpected things come up that eat up even more of the little time that I have left myself and then it is no longer possible even if I rush.

Does this sound at all like something that happens to you?

There's a pretty simple solution but it takes a bit of discipline to make it work for you. When you get up in the morning make a list of all the things you should get done that day. Put them in the order of their importance and estimate how long each one should take you to do. I like to give myself about eighty percent of the time that I think a thing should take me to do, that way I'm putting myself under pressure. And even if I don't finish a certain thing within the time I have allotted for it, I still have part of my day left over to finish up. If you don't work well under pressure, give yourself a little extra time for each thing. At the end of the list put all of the stuff that you would normally do to put things off as the reward for you having gotten your "chores" done for the day.Then get to work.

With this method you get the most important things done. And if you don't get everything done this way, you would not have gotten them all done any other way either. IF for some reason that does end up happening, don't beat yourself up about it, just add the things you did not finish today to the beginning of your list tomorrow. If this happens every day for a week or so, then perhaps you need to look into simplifying your life and reducing your overall amount of commitments.

Comcast provides the fastest most reliable internet service in our area, which sucks.

Our home is a veritable hot spot of internet usage. Sometimes we are downloading a game on our desktops while playing another game on our laptops and using our phones to check movie times or to map out a route to someplace new.

Between streaming movies and videos from one computer to another within our network, torrenting movies, music and games from the internet, playing online games on our computers and Playstation4, checking email,  and just general web browsing we use the internet for just about everything.

We are loyal Comcast customers. But not because we have any real choice. Satellite internet has way too much latency for serious gamers. And AT&T, Comcast's only real competition in the area has much slower service. When AT&T offered 20MB service Comcast offered 50. With AT&T recently offering 50 Comcast upgraded all their 50MB customers to their new 105MB service.

And it really is blazing fast. Sorta. Sometimes. With a wired connection the speeds are often close to 100MB. There are two problems with that statement. One is the word often. It isn't consistent. It's good say maybe 30% of the time. They don't promise any specific speed, just up to 105MB. And two who wants to be stuck in one place all the time? Wireless is the way of the future. They will not guarantee and in fact will not troubleshoot wireless speeds at all.

In fairness Comcast almost never has an outage in our area. They have better than 99% up time. That means they average less than 14 minutes of downtime every day. When they do have an outage it's usually fixed within an hour or less. And there's probably about one every other month or so.

But, we have been having a problem for over a year now that they have failed to be able to do anything about. We have an intermittent issue. It comes and goes. When it shows up we get lag in whatever games, streaming or web browsing that we are doing and we start losing about a third or more of the packets being sent out. It seems to be more of an issue with the upload speed at the time than download speed, but often both are affected.

We have switched out every physical component in our network and we still have this issue. New routers, new cable modems, new splitters, new video cards, you name it we've swapped it. It happens on every one of the over a dozen computers in the house. So it is not a specific setting on a specific computer that is causing the issue. And the same computers do not have this issue when connected to other networks. It is only with the signal we are getting from Comcast that there is an issue.

Each time they promise to send out a technician and each time they do, eventually. About two out of every three of the appointments that we make get cancelled for no specific reason, without them saying a word to us about it being cancelled. We only find out about it after setting time aside to be home for the technician who never ends up showing up. The best part, is Comcast even calls us to tell us that the technician will be coming by shortly on the day of the appointment, and then he or she never does.

Then when we call in to find out why the tech never showed up and what we need to do in order to get one to come out, invariably the rep on the phone asks us to hold while they find out if there will be a charge for sending a technician out to our home.

When a tech does finally come out they say something that contradicts what the last two or three techs to come out have said. They always want to replace some part that they don't have with them and need to set up another appointment. And then...that tech doesn't show up for the appointment and we get to start the whole dance all over.

It's too bad that Comcast provides the fastest most reliable service in our area. Because at this point if I heard that Hitler and Genghis Khan were alive and well and had teamed up to sell internet service that was as fast and as reliable as Comcast, I'd jump ship and go with whatever it is they were offering.

What are habits?

Filthy Habittses always stealing things and running away. Sorry couldn't help a little LOTR humor. It's silly but kind of brings up my first point today.

People tend to put a negative connotation on the word habit. Most likely you think of destructive behaviors when the word habit comes up. And why shouldn't you. Often when the word comes up it is associated with drinking, smoking or even drugs. There are tons of bad habits. Things like driving too fast, not listening to good advice or just taking too many risks in general.

There are so many bad habits, that we tend to treat the words habit and bad habit as synonymous. And that is just not true. Literally, habits are just patterns or routines. Your habits describe what and when you do what it is that you do on a daily basis.

Unless everything you do is bad, all of your habits are not bad. There is nothing wrong with having habits. Without them there would be no order to anything all choices would be random and you would never do things the same way twice, not on purpose anyways.

So unless you are worried about Bishop from the comics coming back from the future to assassinate you in the present, there is no reason to avoid having habits. And now that I think about it, if you have good reason to believe that that may actually happen, chances are you have a lot more to worry about than what your habits are.

In all seriousness habits are a good and necessary part of life. The question  is are your habits serving you or are you serving your habits?

In your mind think of an average week in your life. Imagine every day from the time you wake up until you go to sleep. Think of all the things that you do on a daily basis. As you go through each day in your mind, make a list of all the habits that you can think of that you have. Until you are done with the whole week, don't filter anything out. Just write it all down. Be as honest with yourself and accurate as possible. Then separate the list into three columns, one that is good habits, one that is bad habits, and one for things that are either neutral or for things where you are not sure if they are helpful or not.

Then go down each column one item at a time and think about that particular habit. Think about why it is that you do that particular thing and what you get out of it. Because whether it is good or bad you get something out of every habit that you have, otherwise it would not have become a habit. Sometimes we choose things that we know are not good for us just because we want a certain result.

Give each habit a few moments of your time. Turn it over and look at it from every angle. For each one ask yourself if there is a better way to do this thing. Then think about what your life would be like without this habit.

You might find yourself with a few less habits once you're done or you may find more productive ways to get the same things done. Either way it's a win-win situation for you.

The key to a successful life

Do you ever see people that have the kind of life that you want? They have all the things that you want in your life. You resolve to make your life just that way but how? There are so many little details that need seeing to. How can you ever possibly hope to get all your ducks in a row? When you focus on the big picture it seems impossible.

It can be done but first you need to think about things logically. Looking at the whole scene all at once obviously isn't gonna do it. How about working towards the other end of the spectrum?

To start with do you know what it is that makes a successful life? That would be a lifetime where we have more successes than failures. But that's too big of a goal to start of with, it has too many uncontrolled variables.

What makes up a lifetime of success would be a few decades of successes. That still sounds daunting. You may not be able to guarantee decades of success. How about a single decade of success? That would be ten years with more success than failures. Still a bit much.

How about a year of success? That's only 12 months. It's starting to sound reasonable but still not something we can see ourselves committing to. A single month is only thirty days. Some of us could commit to that and use it as the anchor point for our successful life. But not all of us would be confident in our ability to do so.

Let's go to a single 24 hour period. While it may just be a tiny slice out of a successful life, there is no legitimate reason why we can't commit to and follow through with having a single successful day at any point that we decide to.

Now to be realistic, nobody is going to succeed at everything they do every time they attempt to do something, especially if what you are doing is new or unfamiliar. But if you are willing to put forth a little effort, you certainly can succeed more than you fail.  And if you have more successes in a given day than failures then  that day can be considered a success.

It's why in Alcoholic's Anonymous people are asked to commit to only a single day without drinking. Just get through one day. Then when you wake up the next day recommit for that day and so on until eventually you have control of your life.

Seven days of success makes a successful week. Four weeks of success makes a successful month. Twelve months of success makes for a successful year. Ten years of success makes for a successful decade. Decades of success make for a successful life. But it all starts one day at a time.

You should pick a date in the future when you will have all of the things that you want. Say maybe 10 years into the future. Then scale your vision back to what your life will need to look like in five years so that you can make that ten year goal. Next scale it back to what your life will need to look like in 1 year to meet your five year goals. Then do the same thing for six months in the future, then three, then one. Then figure out what steps you will need to take starting two weeks from now to meet your one month goals. And last but not least decide what changes you need to make starting tomorrow to get to your two week goals.

Then starting tomorrow begin making those changes. But once you have the road map to your future in place, don't focus on the big picture. Focus on making now a success. If you consistently focus on making each now successful the future will take care of itself and your life will be a success.

The thoughts and solutions of crazy people

Do you talk to yourself? Of course you don't. Only scary, crazy homeless people do that. Or probably more accurately, of course you do, you just don't admit it because you don't want people to think you are one of  "those" people.

But have you ever had this problem that you really were struggling to come up with a solution for? Or something that you were just having trouble coming to terms with? What do we do when that happens? When we get lost we tend to look to others for a solution.

So we take some trusted person, be it lover, friend or family member and set aside some time to talk. The other person is all nervous because they are worried about you and what this problem is that you can't solve (but haven't told them anything about up until this point). They aren't even sure that they will be able to help you.

So the conversation begins. You outline the problem, explaining exactly why it is an issue, who it creates hardship for and all of the negative things associated with it. You go into detail about how long this has been going on and what will happen if the problem isn't fixed.

The other person listens for a few minutes, formulates their own opinions and prepares to give you advice. But every time they open up their mouths to speak you rush on with more about the situation, eventually explaining all the possible choices. You weigh the pros and cons of each solution, where they work and where they fail, making the cases both for and against, as if you were defendant and prosecutor all at once. After a very lengthy monologue, you decide what the best possible solution is and resolve to go with that method.

Then what happens?  You thank your confidante for their assistance, promise to talk again soon and send the very flabbergasted and confused person on their way.

They thought they were coming to your aid. They believed the purpose of their visit was to help you solve a problem that you did not see a solution to. And it was. And they did.Sort of.

The other person is just a tool. A sounding board if you will. They aren't really necessary in this process, as long as you are willing to talk to yourself. Out loud. You don't have to do it while wearing rags and in the middle of the street. It could be a fun exercise though :)

See what most people don't realize is that they don't want advice. What they really want is to hear their own thoughts, out loud. What a person thinks may sound perfectly reasonable in ones own head, but when said out loud it suddenly becomes clear that one option is better than all the others.

Don't take this the wrong way. We do need other people in our lives and there is nothing wrong with sharing our experiences with them. And if we truly can not solve our own problems asking others for advice is a great idea. But, we seldom really need the help. Most of the time we have all the information that we need to solve nearly any problem that comes up We just need to be able to sort out our thoughts and prioritize them until the solution rises to the top of the pile of options.

What do your choices tell others about you?

Like most of what I say, today's post may be full of wisdom or it may be full of nonsense depending on what your perspective is.

As many of you I am sure know, I play and have played a lot of different mmo's over the past couple of decades. The most recent game that I am into is called Marvel Heroes and it not surprisingly deals with quite a bit of the goings on within the Marvel Universe.

The general idea of the game is you choose a character that you will use to defend the innocent good people of the world from evildoers. The line gets a little blurred somewhere along the way because several of the available characters to choose from are known "bad" guys.

There have been some hiccups. But, more or less, the devs have done a pretty good job of balancing out all of the characters so that they are all viable and within the same ballpark as far as damage dealing and survivability. So there really isn't a best character per se. It comes up all the time though. New players are all asking who is the best character to play.

While watching probably the millionth chat discussion about that very thing, it occurred to me that one could very easily and probably accurately, psychoanalyze players based on the comic book characters they chose to play from a given pool of available heroes and villains. People often tend to strongly relate to the characters they choose to be in video games.

There are characters that choose to shoot first and ask questions later. There are some that prefer to be up close and personal for their damage dealing. Others like controlling the circumstances from behind the scenes. Amongst those that do physical damage some of the options are martial arts, bladed weapons, guns,explosives, arrows and boulders. For energy damage we have things like lightning,ice, fire, tornadoes and earthquakes. Mentalists can do damage with bolts of mental power or by actually controlling their opponents.

Some of the characters, even those that are thought of as heroes want their opponents to suffer, people like the Punisher and Ghost Rider. Others like Captain America just want justice to be served.  And then there are those like Spiderman that do what they do just to protect others that cannot protect themselves.

Unless you choose completely randomly, who you choose to play and what strengths, weaknesses, and philosophies those characters have says a lot about you and your mindset. The first character chosen would probably not be enough to make an accurate overall assessment of a person. But with each successive choice the picture would become sharper and sharper. What order a person picks things in out of a group shows what things that person values more and what things are of less value to them.

Multiple similar choices tends to show a strong preference for a specific thing. (ie. picking several tanky type characters in a row) Whereas choosing many different types of character shows a tendency for balance and a want to always have the right tool at hand, rather than believing that one tool will solve nearly every problem.

I suppose nearly any game with a large number of very different character choices could be used to pyscho-analyze people. Remember how you handle things in one area of your life tends to be the way you handle things in most areas of your life.  What do you think the choices you make in the games you play tell other people about you?

I think it should be called the dis comfort zone

While growing up, we learn things about the world, things that help shape who and what we are. We have all these different experiences with relationships and environments and based on those experiences we make decisions about what is and is not possible, about what can and cannot be done.

After getting burned a few times by life, our lives begin to fall into a certain pattern. A general routine gets formed and from that point on we pretty much blindly follow the pattern day in and day out for the rest of our lives.

That pattern is called our comfort zone and it is one of the biggest stumbling blocks there is to our growth as a person. It is called our comfort zone, even thought it is not necessarily a place we enjoy being, because it is what we are used to. It is familiar, comfortable. In our comfort zone life still happens and things are somewhat random, just in a way that we have control of.

Our comfort zone includes all of our beliefs, traditions and habits. Once we learn something new and accept it into our way of being, it becomes part of our comfort zone. And sadly once that happens our brains pretty much turn off and we live on auto-pilot. We don't think about that thing anymore. It just is.

The problem with this way of being is, life is dynamic. Things are constantly changing. What was true one minute may not be in another. In order to be as successful as we possibly can, in order to get as much out of life as possible, we need to constantly be testing our boundaries, checking for new ideas and testing to see whether old ones are still valid. There is nothing wrong with tradition or routine. What is wrong is blindly following without making sure that what was true once is true still.

We make snap decisions based on environment and negative reinforcement all the time that are true in that moment or that circumstance but not true overall in life. And it hurts us, in ways that we often do not realize.

 For example after a string of relationship rejections we might decide that there is nobody out there looking for someone like us. The truth was that those particular people were not looking for someone like us. But we decide to give up on being in a relationship based on those examples. There are billions of people on this planet. Deciding after ten, a few hundred, or even a few thousand rejections that there is no one out there for us is just stupid.

An experiment was done where a group of college students were assembled in a room. They were told they could leave whenever they liked. Immediately one of them tested the door and found it locked.

A few minutes later loud unpleasant music began to play. This was followed up by the lights flickering on and off intermittently. Then gradually all kinds of horrifying discordant sounds were added.

Several hours later all of the students were still sitting there in the room. After the experiment was over they found out that the door had only been locked for the first five minutes.

The one student had checked the door, found it locked and shared that information with everyone else who from that time on just accepted the "fact" that they were locked in even though it wasn't true.

They all suffered for hours just because of one thing that they made part of their comfort zone.

You might say if you were in that circumstance you would make a different choice, and perhaps you would, but we all make thousands of similar blunders throughout our lifetime.

How can this be avoided though? Get out of your comfort zone. Test the boundaries.Don't accept anything as permanently true. There is no need to be belligerent or mean spirited, but always be inquisitive. Find out why a thing is the way that it is, how long it's been that way and whether or not it has ever been different.

Be open to change. Either because things actually have changed or because new information causes you to find that things you thought were true were not.

Labels say things about you that are not true.

Life is full of labels. People are always looking for a quick easy way to define who another person is and what they stand for. It is where we get the majority of our stereotypes from. There are Christians, Muslims, and Jews, blacks, whites, yellows and reds, democrats and republicans, liberals and conservatives, nerds and jocks, and literally millions more.

The problem with labels is when someone hears that a certain label applies to you they tend to act as if all of your potential has been limited to that one particular facet of your way of being, as if that single adjective completely defines who and what you are. And that could not  be further from the truth.

Take for example the label of Christian. First of all it means different things to different people.  But to many people it means a person who has good morals and ethics. To some it means people that intrude on the lives of others and try to make decisions for them, decisions that aren't theirs to make.

There is only one Bible. But there are over one thousand sects of Christianity and each one has beliefs that are different and distinct enough for them to have their own specific label. Episcopalians, 7th Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses and many many others.

Each person within each sect of Christianity has their own viewpoint on what being Christian means. Each has their own values and beliefs. Literally Christian simply means follower of Christ. If a person tells you that they are a Christian, if you take anything more from that label than the literal definition you are being unfair to that person, by pigeonholing them and lumping them in with all of the other Christians that you have ever known.

I've mentioned in the past that first impressions are a terrible thing and the main reason really is because it's where we get the labels that we put on a person, like name tags. And then in the future we subconsciously replace the person with the labels.

Most of the labels that we associate with a given person represent just a fraction of what they really think and believe. We are not any single label. We are an amalgamation of all of the things that we see, do, think and believe. A true representation of a person would require hundreds if not thousands of labels. For example when people ask me what religion I follow, I tell them that I am a Buddhist, Jehovah's Witness, Viking. Then I twist things even further by saying that I am not very religious but am extremely spiritual.

I have taken bits and pieces of many major religions and formed an ethical code of what I believe is right and wrong. No simple label could ever really describe my religious beliefs. Pagan doesn't work. Neither does agnostic. My political beliefs work the same way. Some are republican ideals, others democratic, some liberal some conservative.

There is no hard set fast easy way to define any given person. Indeed from day to day sometimes our beliefs change. What we thought was true yesterday may not be what we think today. Think about all the labels that have been applied to you by other people. How many of them really fit? Are you the stereotype that people are talking about when they mention a specific label?

Each of us is unique. We may share certain traits with others. But do we really need the labels?

Do you really know the people you love?

Most of us are constantly surrounded day in and day out by people. The world is full of them.Some we like, some we love, others we despise. The ones we don't like we often tend to know quite a bit about. We frequently make ourselves consciously aware of their likes and dislikes so that we can be avoid being like them.

One would think that we would naturally seek to find out what things those we love like and dislike. But often that is not the case. Oh, it might be, early on in the relationship, when we are struggling to get them to like us, but somewhere along the way that curiosity tends to fade and die out altogether. We find out what we need to know to get them solidly in our lives and then once we do, we move on to other pursuits.

We are constantly hit with all this data, especially from TV and news media about ourselves, how and what to do to take care of ourselves and make us happy. Advertisements focus on our enjoyment of life and how their products will make us feel and look. But, unless it's the holidays, they don't spend much time focused on how what they have to offer will make our families and friends happy.

In all fairness we do have to live with ourselves forever. There is no escaping oneself. But a large part of truly enjoying ones life comes from the happiness we can bring to others. It is joy shared that is joy multiplied.

It has been said that the most powerfully positive magickal word for a person to hear, is their own name.  Now, this is just a guess, but I think you probably know the names of the five closest people in your life. But how often do you use it?

And what about other things that they like and care about?

Make a list of the five people that you are the closest to in your life. Attempt to answer these questions for each of them. No cheating. Do this simply from what you already know about those you care about and love.

What is their favorite color?

When is their birthday?

What is their favorite food? What is their least favorite?

Do they have a favorite drink?

What are their hobbies? What do they do to unwind?

What is one place they have never been but would like to visit?

What are their goals for the future?

What is the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?(sorry. j/k couldn't help it)

Knowing yourself as intimately as you do, these should be easy questions to answer about you, but can you answer them as your friends and family would?

Don't worry, not knowing doesn't make you a terrible person. It just gives you the opportunity to learn more about your loved ones. I am not saying that you should spend all day everyday focusing on other people. Having you time is important as well. But don't you think you should spend at least some time showing those that you care about that what they want really matters to you? That they are just as important to you as you are to them?

Is defending worth the punishment?

Have you ever gotten in trouble for doing something you weren't supposed to? Of course you have. At one time or another we all break the rules. Inevitably, some authority figure finds out and then it's time to pay the price.

Being punished isn't something we relish though. So, when you got caught, you probably attempted to defend yourself. You came up with a bunch of reasons to justify what you did or to lessen the "badness" of your action(s).

Does that ever really work? No, almost never. What happens instead is that you get all self righteous about things and that makes the other person who knows that what you did was wrong even more upset.

When you put on your armor and begin setting up your defenses it encourages other people to take up the offensive.

A few years back, Eminem starred in the movie 8 Mile which was a somewhat autobiographical accounting of his life. Throughout the movie there are a series of rap battles. Now in these battles a rapper has a certain amount of time to win over an audience and then a 2nd rapper is given the microphone and tries win them over to their side with their witty rhymes.

The content of these battles is usually disparaging remarks about the other rapper and positive things about oneself. For most of the movie Eminem's character would freeze up and he was constantly made fun of by the other rappers. But, at one point he decides he has had enough and he is out for blood. He is winning this one no matter what.

Does he go out there and tear into the other guy, verbally eviscerating him? Nope. Instead he goes out and rhymes all the negative derogatory things that he can think of about himself. He admits everything that the other guy is thinking and planning on saying.

The result? The other guy, the supposed best rapper in the area, had nothing to say. Eminem took all the wind out of his sails. He was planning on saying a bunch of negative things about Eminem, but if he did, he would just sound like some lame copycat. So he concedes and Eminem wins.

If we break a rule and attempt to get out of the punishment by denying it or defending why we did it, quite often the punishment will be even more severe than if we had said nothing at all. But if we break the rule, acknowledge it and are clear that we agree with and honestly accept the punishment, others are less inclined to want to punish us for the infraction.

The lesson here is that when someone one else comes gunning for us, figuratively, if we pull out the big guns and fire away at ourselves, others find there is no reason for their attack. We are already telling them that we know why they have come and we agree with them.

Think about it. There are two kids. Both steal a cookie from the cookie jar. One says "I took the cookie because I think I should be able to have three a day instead of the two you have been giving me" The other says "I took the cookie. I know what I did was wrong. My tummy was telling me I was hungry but I should have gotten something else. What is my punishment?

The first child directly questions your decisions. The second freely admits guilt and knows what to do in the future to prevent a reoccurrence.  Who do you want to punish?

When others see all the ammunition we unload on ourselves, without any attempt or pretext at any kind of defense whatsoever, often they will join our side and do what they can to cushion the blows.

Contrary to popular belief, people subconsciously want to defend those who are defenseless and attack those that are defending.

How strong are your beliefs?

People like Hitler, the KKK and radical terrorist groups,I don't agree with.

I hate what they do or have done to countless innocent people. Their methods are heinous. But I respect that they are willing to stand up for what they believe in. It is clear and concise, what they believe and what lengths they will go to in order to stand up for it. And if what they believed in didn't lead to the slaughter of their fellow man you probably would too.

In polite society, people don't really challenge one another's beliefs. For the most part we just agree to disagree and spend less time with the people that don't think like we do. You really only hear about how strong a person's beliefs are when they are killing for them, running for public office, or once they have died.

Anytime what we really believe is challenged by another person we automatically react, by getting angry and going on the offensive. Half the time even when someone is just asking questions, attempting to get a better understanding of what it is that we believe, we react as if they are attacking our core being.

Why?

We are not our beliefs. We are not our country, our dog, or our parents. We aren't our views on patriotism, religion or government.

Those things are simply our point of view on the world around us. The thing is, getting angry or violent when someone else does not understand or agree with your belief is not likely to get them to suddenly see your side of things. It is in fact, more likely to polarize them against you.

I think it is healthy to have your beliefs challenged on a regular basis. What we tend to do is to make up our mind about a thing based on a limited pool of data and then never think about it again. We operate for decades on beliefs that only took us minutes or a few hours at the most to come up with.

But what would you do if you were to wake up in a world where your beliefs were constantly questioned and you were antagonized for making life style choices that to you seemed completely arbitrary?  Imagine being verbally abused every time you wore blue jeans or a white top. What if smiling were outlawed? What if having sex daily was mandatory between the ages of 24 and 30 but a crime at any other time?

Would you, could you live in such a world?  All of us have different things that we value, and to different degrees. There is mostly likely a certain point where you would decide enough is enough and you would rebel against the system. But where would that point be? Do you know your triggers?

And what would you do? Would you take the first step or wait for some charismatic leader to rally behind? Would you decide to enter politics or law to change the things that you could not abide? Or. Would you fight to the death for the freedoms that you value?

And if so would you do it as a warrior in some people's army against the government? Or would you become a terrorist? Or a supporter that makes supplies for the troops?

Is there a difference?

I like to think that I know how I would respond based on how I have responded to various injustices in my life. But as time goes on it seems that less and less people are willing to stand up for themselves.

The average individual lets others make nearly all of their decisions, has virtually no hand in politics and has the police and armed forces to protect them so that they no longer need to do any fighting personally.

The real question is, has it made our beliefs stronger or weaker as a result?

So much advice. Who to listen to?

With around seven billion people travelling with us on spaceship Earth, there is a seemingly unlimited amount of opinions about what is right or wrong in any given situation. And most people are not at all shy about telling you what they think you should do.

We are constantly being bombarded from all sides, everyday, by the thoughts and ideas of others. Radio, TV and magazine advertisements tell us how their product is better than anyone else's. Friends, family and other loved ones give us their advice on everything under the sun, from romance and sex, to money, what clothes to buy, how we should act. If you can name it, there are tons of people that want to tell us how or why to do it.

Our instinct seems to be, and in fact the way most of us handle things, is to just say and do what other people that we trust tell us. The people that we believe have our best interests at heart are the ones that we tend to take advice from. We treat the people that care about us as authorities on whatever subject it is that we need help with.

The flaw in this logic is that well, it isn't really logical at all. Quite often the people we turn to for advice are just as lost on whatever topic it is that we need help with as we are.

For example, you might go to your favorite uncle for relationship advice because he is someone you feel comfortable talking to. But if he has been divorced four times, the odds are his relationship advice isn't very sound.

Or perhaps you are having trouble managing your finances. You might go to your father for help. After all he was head of the household while you were growing up. He cares about you and would never intentionally steer you wrong. But if he is broke and living paycheck to paycheck, the advice he has for you isn't likely to help out very much.

Most of the advice that we are given by other people is not factual. It is opinions formed by their own experiences in life. If the person giving the advice has not had success with the issue at hand then they are not qualified to share with you what will bring success. They can in fact tell you what did not work for them, but they have no way of knowing what will work for you.

The Oracle in Matrix Revolutions says  " You can’t see beyond a choice you don’t understand."

If you haven't experienced something, you cannot share that experience with someone else. If you want solid advice about a given topic, seek out a person that has actually achieved the level of success that you are looking for. Only a person that has done so really knows and understands what they are talking about. Everyone else is just guessing.

The same thing goes for negative feedback. If you are starting a new business or relationship, countless people will tell you exactly how or why things just aren't going to work. Take a moment to separate the list of people giving you advice into two groups, the ones who have achieved what you are working towards and those that have not. Then only listen to and accept into your way being advice from people who have succeeded at what it is that you intend to do. Acknowledge those other people that care enough to share their opinions but realize that they are only opinions.

Ancient and modern goings on

What do TV shows like Beavis and Butthead and Southpark have in common with the philosophies of Socrates, the science of Galileo and the works of William Shakespeare?

On the surface one might think the answer is nothing. Southpark for example just seems at first glance like a huge collection of dick and fart jokes all strung together each episode around some ridiculous theme. And while that is one part of the show, there is so much more to it.

A typical episode usually tackles one or more things going on in the real world that just are not right. It is done as a form of satire and usually is skewed to a pretty far extreme to show one person or side's point of view. It is intentionally irreverent and over the top and generally the kids and their swearing or violent outbursts serve to somewhat divert attention away from and cushion the blow to the people being "made fun" of. Southpark is filled with pop culture references and lots of wordplay.

But really, it does serve as political commentary about the state of the modern world. One can actually see the ties with current events and sometimes when we see things through some other person's eyes we can see solutions to things that we would never see on our own. The general feeling I get when I am finished watching an episode is wow we really are being kinda stupid about this or that thing. There has to be a better way of handling it. I am not a fan of the show by the way.

And then there's Beavis and Butthead. This is one of my guilty pleasures. It's really not much of a show. The original episodes were probably about five to ten minutes long total as it would start out at some point in the average day of these two young teens and then after a couple minutes would cut to a recent popular video on MTV. When the video was over it would pick back up at the next scene in their day. This would go back and forth until the episode was over. There would be two episodes per half hour. While the videos would play Beavis and Butthead would MST3000 it and often their commentary was simply hilarious.

Now out of the two, Beavis and Butthead is a far less cerebral show and the characters themselves are practically retarded, constantly injuring themselves doing the stupidest things imaginable. It also had a string of pop culture references too, but much less than Southpark. And yet this show is also a great placeholder for the way our country is today. I have sat with many different people watching the antics of Beavis and Butthead and thought, I really do know people this stupid or I really do know people that say and do many of the very same things these two lost teens do.

While I don't think either of these shows have a Romeo and Juliet. And I don't think their philosophy is going to change the world. Nor will they be bringing us any scientific breakthroughs anytime soon. Many of the works of Galileo and Socrates and a lot of the subject matter of Shakespeare was not widely accepted when introduced to the world.

These recent shows did some of the same things that these other great men did. They challenged what was considered popular and made people think. Some people just got angry. Others wanted to fight. Some had open minds and were able to see and accept opinions that were different than their own.

Whether for better or worse they have had an impact on the lives of people and have to some degree changed the world.

Resolution for realz

Have you ever found yourself standing next to a friend or loved one either just before or just after that great big ball in New York makes its way down to the ground? They are going on and on about how this year is going to be their year and making resolution after resolution. Chances are you only listen with half an ear.

Its okay it happens to almost all of us. Or maybe you are the one making the endless streams of commitments. How come so few of us take it seriously?

After all a resolution is supposed to be something that you resolve to do. You are making a statement about how your life is going to change for the better. You are spelling out what needs to occur in order to have a better life and making a promise to make it happen.

No one time is really better than any other to make positive change in your life. It can happen whenever we choose to make it happen. As long as we are alive there really is no beginning and no ending. But, traditionally, it is done at New Year's because the ringing in of the new year is a symbolic beginning. It is easy for us to section off in our mind all of the things that happened before the new year from those things that happen afterwards.

We say that the things that happened before are part of our old life and the things that happen after are part of the new one. At the very beginning of the year we haven't done any of the things that we "aren't supposed to". So , it is easy to say that we won't do them. Or that we will do more of what we should.

But it seems like for most of us this tradition is just something we pay lip service to and do kind of on autopilot. It is as if our conscience (or the part of us that knows what we need to do in order to get the things we really want) is allowed to speak for a brief time at the beginning of the year and then we ignore it for the rest of the year.

Why do we do that? We take one of the best tools that we could ever hope to have for making improvements to our lives and we either ignore it entirely, or we share with friends and family exactly what we need and then proceed to follow the precise course we've been on that is leading us nowhere.

I challenge you to make a different choice.

I challenge you to either consciously accept that you are going to keep on having exactly the same sucky things that you have in your life right now, or decide once and for all that you are going to change things for good.

But, please, for the love of all that is sacred, stop lying to your friends and family about the things that you say you are going to do, when everyone involved knows you have no intention of actually following through.

When a person is truly committed to something, others can hear the conviction in their voice, see their posture and facial expressions and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever it is that person says is going to happen. When was the last time someone someone got any of those things out of your New Year's resolutions?

If your life would be made better by losing twenty pounds, lose twenty pounds. If it would be made better by a new relationship, get a new relationship. If your quality of life would be improved by not smoking, quit smoking.

If you are actually going to make your life better in some way, feel free to make a commitment and share it with others as one of your New Year's resolutions. It is okay if you need assistance in keeping the resolution, but at least be willing to do the work.

What about your potential?

Most people tend to go through life doing what I call sandbagging, just doing the minimum that is needed in order to survive. But then, they tend to complain about their lot in life, about how it is so much less than it could be.

Each and every single one of us has greatness within us. It is not something that we have to learn or something that we need to cultivate. It is there inside just waiting to get out. If every person stopped letting fear run their lives and making them play small the world would be a much different place.

Psychologist William James, put it this way. “Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and behaves below his optimum".

Note here that he was talking about not a specific person, but people on the whole. All of us.

And such eloquent verbiage. Powers which we habitually fail to use. That makes it sound, and rightly so, that we have great talents and skills that we could easily use to make our daily lives so much better, if only we chose to.

If this is true, why don't we? Basically, the answer is fear. We know what life is like right now and even though it may not be pleasant, as long as we don't do anything new, it will likely stay relatively the same. We fear what we don't know, even if there is every likelihood and indication that the change would be for the better.

You would think that the fear would be of failure. But nine times out of ten what we fear is success. See, we already know about failure, it is an old friend, one that we have spent quite a bit of time with. But wildly fantastic success, now that would be a completely new adventure, into a scary unknown future.

Failure can be controlled even guaranteed. Success can too, but its hard to understand someone describing the light to you, if you have been blind your whole life. Just as a person who has lived their whole life with excruciating pain every single moment may want to wake up one day without being in pain, it is not something that they can truly understand much less imagine.

But who are the people that do manage to use these powers and abilities that lie dormant within all of us? Celebrities, artists, scientists, athletes, the rich and famous, successful people everywhere. They are the less than one percent of the population that conquer their fear of success, and fear of the unknown. The ones who pull back the curtain and let their full light shine out onto the rest of the world.

They are the people that choose to stop sandbagging and decide to start letting their awesomeness out. They are the people who start giving one hundred percent all the time and not holding back.
Join the one percent. Trust me.

You will be amazed by just how much more you can achieve than your ever thought or believed was possible. No one can say what your true potential really is. But for most of us, it is many hundreds maybe even thousands of times what have already achieved.

A family trip pt2

I could see how ideas and points of view that were expressed decades ago, when I was just a few years old, affected people that had children and grandchildren at the current gathering.

This time I was more towards the middle and having learned a lot more about being open to different ideas, I could really get where each person was coming from whether older or younger than me. Before, I pretty much discarded things that were outside of my paradigm. Now, I look for ways to expand my paradigm by what others say.

Looking at what I learned about the members of my family while spending some time with them, I can see the impact that their thoughts and beliefs have had in shaping a lot of my own, even though many of them were just seeds planted and then left to fend for themselves. I see reflected in all of their hearts and minds great tolerance and understanding.

I can see ideas that my great grandparents and their siblings used to have that affected the choices my grandmother made. I can see things that she said and did that shaped what my mother and her siblings did. I can see things that they have said and done that shaped how me, my brothers and my cousins have and are turning out. And I can see habits and patterns of behavior that we got from them that are shaping the youngest of us.

Though I have spent much time cut off from them, by my own choice, I could not be who I am today if it were not for them. I would like to be able to take credit for many of the fine ideas that I have about who I am and what I want to accomplish. But the simple truth is that the environment and ideas of those who cared for me when I was younger drove me towards the decisions that I make now.

Almost every one of them is either retired from, currently in or working at getting into a service field, something that helps make other people's lives better. A sample of their chosen fields are medicine, social work, corrections and the armed forces. All have a different idea of exactly how to do it. But, each gets fulfillment from being in service to others. Is it any wonder that my goal is to devote a portion of my life to making the world a better place?

I didn't spend all that much time talking. Most of it was spent listening, observing and absorbing. A great deal of life experience happened in a short period of time. There is quite a bit more that I can learn from this short trip that we took, but first I will need to spend more time processing it.


Happy 2014

A family trip pt1

We went up to Malabar, Florida to visit family for New Year's. With it having been more than ten years since the last visit, it was definitely long overdue. It used to be a trip that got made every year when I was younger.

Then awhile back there were some issues between my mom, myself and one of my brothers that never really got resolved. It's water under the bridge now, but for quite a long period of time, I was upset about it and really didn't want to have anything to do with my brother.

Between that and the passing on of my great-grandparents I just couldn't make myself be part of our annual gatherings.

Though outwardly, not much has changed, I am a much different person than I was ten years ago. Many of the things that I did then, I would do differently now and would get much different results.
Some of the relationships I had with family in the past could certainly do with some improvement.

Also, now, I have more immediate family of my own. And it is important to me that they have the opportunity to form strong familial bonds, just as I would like to strengthen and regain some of the ones that I had before and grow new ones.

Between children, parents, grandparents and great grandparents, there were four generations of our family represented. Not everyone was there due to some that could not make it and some that chose not to, but it was the majority of the people that I have come to accept as our family.

When I was just a few years old I used to hang out in the kitchen with my great grandmother and "help" her cook. And I used to love watching my great grandfather's home movies. His voice was always the perfect narration for whatever happened to be going on at the time.

My great grandfather's birthday was New Years and mine is on Christmas. We always used to have a small celebration for the two birthdays when the family would gather. I could care less about mine. But I really enjoyed celebrating his. It was when he really started to get sick that I lost interest in the family gatherings. I just didn't want to believe that one day they would be gone.

Seeing a picture of the two of them on my grandmother's refrigerator almost brought me to tears. Even now I'm tearing up while writing this. I never realized how much I miss them.

Then it occurred to me that they were directly responsible for all of the people who are still here that were gathered together as family. And I had to smile at that, because although they were all very different some soft and gentle, some rough around the edges and others at varying stages in between, they were all good people.

There were more than a dozen of us, so quarters were a little cramped, but not unpleasantly so. It was fun and interesting learning and observing people's habits and points of view. Before, I was one of the members of the  younger generation of the family.  I remember the ideas, thoughts and even prejudices of the older generation that would get shared in idle conversation. Some of them are people whose names and face I have forgotten.

But, it was fascinating to see the impact that their beliefs had on the middle and younger generations. How some things were accepted and complied with and others were shaken off through either rejection or rebellion, but each thing still made an impact.