Why is this here? pt1

I am a person that is always interested in becoming better than I already am.  Part of improving yourself is being able to look at the things that you have done in the past and learning from them.  Your record is there to show where you were at the point in your life that you happen to be looking at.  Then once you see where you were or maybe still are, you can compare that with where you want to be and begin planning what steps to take next.

When I first started these posts, I thought that they would be a good way of sharing my point of view with the world. Many people have asked me what I think on a great number of different subjects and they usually find my answers to be interesting. I know though, that quite often they do not really understand where it is that I am coming from. My general point of view is so different from that of the average person as to be completely incompatible with their understanding when only individual slices of what I think are known.

Each little piece requires understanding of two or three other things in order to make perfect sense. And each of those other things requires other things. Often times people can not wrap their head around how I make a decision. Usually this is because there is something that I accept to be true, that they do not, which then becomes the basis for a system of ideas that then builds until my conclusion is the only one likely to be true. The conversation though never gets to the system of ideas because the person spends too much time arguing about the thing that I accepted as true in the beginning. And then while explaining the basis for how and why I believe that thing to be true we find other things that I accept as true that they do not.

All of the things that I believe to be true, I have determined through rigorous testing, seeking evidence that it is true and seeking evidence that it is not. Most of the arguments I get into with people about what I believe versus what they believe are about their feelings. I present facts and they say they do not feel that what I am saying is true. They feel that I am wrong. But when I ask for the evidence to back up their claims suddenly the subject gets changed or there is just a repeated assertion that I am wrong.

It occurred to me recently that the things that I am sharing here are my thoughts in bits and pieces. The individual parts may not get through to a person any better than a face to face conversation.  But here at least, I am not interrupted and can continue my chain of thinking from beginning to end.  And maybe, just maybe once there is a large enough collection of my thoughts, ideas, reasons and ideals, the whole will begin to make sense to some of those that have struggled to understand me. That is one good reason to keep writing but it's not what guides my hand from day to day.

More tomorrow :)

Be the source

There is a quote that many people attribute to Gandhi.  It goes like this. "Be the change you want to see in the world". There is much disagreement about whether or not he ever spoke those exact words. Does that really matter though? It is obvious from the way he lived his life that this was his philosophy.

Here was a man who looked around himself, at the state of the world, and more directly at the state of affairs in his own country. What he saw appalled him. He thought that the way things were sucked. And he was right. Things were terrible. He took a stand and changed them.

In your own life, what do you do when you look around you and you find that you do not like what you see? If you are like many people, you close your eyes and simply stop looking. Or if you are like most people, maybe you complain about it to your friends, family and co-workers. You see all the things around you that you do not like, but you tell yourself that there is nothing you can do. You say that it is always going to be this way or worse.

The philosophy of being the source of the change you want to see in the world is very powerful, because the odds are that other people are just as unhappy and just as fed up with the way things are as you are. There are always others who are waiting to rally behind a cause that will improve their lives. Yet, the world is a mess because people generally do not do anything to make it better. Each person is always waiting for someone else to take charge and be the leader. Statistically speaking, eventually someone will take a stand for change. But why suffer until then? Why wait to rally behind someone else that decides they have been hurt and frustrated for long enough?

Be like Gandhi. Take stock of your situation and decide what you are okay with and what you are not. Ask yourself some questions. Decide what sacrifices you are willing to make to have the things that you want. Look inside of yourself and find out what needs to change. Find out who you need to be in order to make the changes in your world that are necessary for you to be satisfied with the outcome. Surround yourself with people that want the same things that you do. Then create a set of actionable steps that you can do to get what you want.  After that, follow the plan until you accomplish your goals or goals.

It doesn't matter what your goal is. It could be as simple as having a garden in your yard, getting more money or improving situations where you work or as complicated as getting into a serious relationship and starting a family. You can even have a goal that has a huge impact on your home country or the whole world, such as abolishing all bans on gay marriage or creating a single universal currency. If you truly believe that it should happen then you should be the one to make it happen.

The only way you can ensure that the changes that you want in life occur is to be the source of those changes. What are you waiting for? Make the world a better place.

If you can believe it...

You can do it.  In 1954 an Englishman, named Roger Bannister did something that had never been recorded before. He ran a mile in just under four minutes. The interesting thing about this is before that, in the 1940's, scientists and doctors had reams of statistics showing that due to the physics of motion and the general make-up of the human body running the mile in under four minutes was a physical impossibility. Many people believed this with absolute certainty. And those people were right. Until they weren't.

For a great many years the four minute mile was an unobtainable goal. What changed? For the longest time the athletes themselves believed it could not be done. After all nobody they had ever heard of had been able to do it. Their trainers could not do it and did not know anybody that had. Medical science said it could not be done. But all successful athletes are constantly working to improve themselves, striving to be stronger, smarter and faster. They train with other athletes and learn new techniques for pacing and breathing. Their minds are always looking for what is next. They never get to the finish line and say okay that's it, that's the best I will ever be able to do, now i'm gonna take up fishing. Each time they meet a goal they are looking forward to the next one. And each time they prove to themselves that it is possible to be just a little better than the last time.

Regardless of what other people told them, it was only a matter of time before the athletes running the mile had enough focus and strength of purpose to start believing that a four minute mile was possible.  All that had to happen for that belief to become a reality is that the person accomplishing the goal had to have a stronger belief than the people telling him it could not be done.

Ultimately, the belief of someone that is actually in the process of accomplishing something is much stronger than the belief of someone sitting on the sidelines. A runner has more knowledge of what their body can do in a race than a doctor or scientist. What the runner has is practical knowledge, gained by doing. Everyone else just has statistical data based on what has been observed. In most cases what science tells us is possible or not is based on a generalization surrounding the "facts" about what has and has not been done.

We used to live in a world where the four minute mile was an impossibility. So was wireless communication. We used to know for a fact that such a thing as an airplane could not ever possibly exist. We used to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the world was flat and were prone to murdering or locking away people that had PROOF to the contrary.

Take a minute and imagine if you will telling someone a thousand years ago about how one day they would be able to get into their car and drive to the movie theater. And you could go on to tell them that one of their friends would be able to pull out their wireless phone and buy tickets for the movie, while another friend bought a ticket for a flight to Memphis that they were taking the next day.  It would probably take you twenty minutes to describe all the concepts contained in those two sentences. By the time you finished explaining all the simply ridiculous things that you were talking about, the person you were talking to would certainly be looking at you like you were a madman, an idiot or both.  You would be hitting them with thing after thing after thing that they know to be impossible. And in their world with their limitations, they would be right.

Until they weren't.

Lack of belief system pt3

The only thoughts, beliefs and feelings that you can ever be absolutely sure of are your own. You see and experience them in a way that no other person ever can or will. You have a perfect understanding of these things and these things alone. They are the only REAL things to you. Others will try to express their experiences to the best of their ability but will invariably fail to have you get it, in the same way that they do. It just is not possible, unless they can cause you to have the exact same experience that they do. It is in this way that we are always alone, no matter how close we get to people and no matter how many people we get close to. Our minds rail out against that being true. They do not accept it.

So we communicate with one another and share our experiences together. And although we do our very best to get others to see what we think and feel and believe, words are clunky. They mean different things to different people. Even when two people look up a word in the dictionary and say that they both understand the meaning, they often still are thinking two different things, even if only slightly. And when each word means something slightly different to each person, is it any wonder that whole paragraphs get misconstrued? When trying to send a person to the moon, even a single miscalculation, like say we point the Space Shuttle just a fraction of a percent off of the perfect angle will cause us to miss the moon by thousands of miles. The images and thoughts that come to my mind when I mention the word red are probably not the same images and thoughts that occur to you.

If we are to ever have even a prayer of understanding one another's hopes and dreams we have to communicate. Even though we get it wrong so often, we still have to make the attempt. Words are our primary source of communication.  You might be asking why all this is necessary. Well the main reason is, I want you to realize that I mean something slightly different when I use words that imply absolutes, things like fact and certainty, or if I say that I think or believe a certain thing. Outside of actual experiences that I have had, I do not believe in absolutes. What I mean when I say these things is, based on the research and testing that I have done on this particular thing, up until this point, I find it highly likely for this thing to be true. Now is that an awesome sentence or what? No, seriously it's great, but it's also a huge mouthful to repeat five hundred times a day. Instead, I say, I think this or I feel that way. It is a shorthand that is necessary for useful communication. If I were to constantly be reminding you that I am not sure if a thing is or it isn't because I haven't tested it fully you would probably think I am either too wishy-washy or too verbose to be worth talking to. I do make an effort not to use absolutes as much as others do, just as I make an effort not to be too indecisive seeming. Imperfect as it is, it is the best compromise that I have found. Just remember when I am using absolutes that what I mean is that this thing is very likely to be.

Since the only things that you can ever fully know occur within your own mind and body and so much of the universe occurs outside of them, there has to be a relatively safe and secure method of interfacing with reality, in a way that is not going to come crashing down around you, when you suddenly realize some new and powerful thing. I found a way. And I call it my lack of belief structure. I do not actually believe in anything. I know it sounds ridiculous. But it is true, I do not. I just think some things are more likely to be true than others.