Just do it!

We have a tendency to avoid things that we find  unpleasant or that we really don't want to deal with. When something comes up that is suboptimal, we often steer ourselves in a different direction. We believe our lives are made better by finding a different path. This is often not the case.

The other night I heard a conversation between a couple of my roommates. One was going to cook dinner. Impeding her progress was a specific dirty dish. Now I am not clear on whether or not she was going to use the dish to cook with or if the issue was that it was just physically in her way, preventing her from having full access to the sink or counters and whatnot.

But instead of simply washing the dish and then going on about her business of cooking a tasty meal, she decided not to cook. Worry not, she didn't starve. Other food arrangements were made. The point is extra time and money were spent that didn't need to be.

Then the next night, she came into the kitchen, again, planning to cook dinner. Immediately a string of curses could be heard as she started swearing about how that same dish was still there, still dirty. Two days in a row her ability to cook was being hampered by her choice to let a single dirty dish get in her way.

Now, I am not suggesting that we should just ignore the fact that other people leave things in a less than perfect state. It is not okay for us as adults to leave messes behind for other people to clean up. But why let something that would take less than two minutes to wash dry and put away change our plans for the evening? Not only do these things take up our time and energy, we take up the time and energy of others complaining about them. That time and energy could be put to better use finding out who left out the unclean item and getting a commitment from them to do a better job cleaning up after themselves in the future.

We have agreements to keep our home clean, for each person to make sure they don't leave behind things for others to deal with. But, none of us are perfect and from time to time we are going to make mistakes. Some of us more than others, but it happens to all of us. Taking it personally, getting upset or angry when others fail to do as they have agreed does nothing but ruin your mood.

And letting these little things get in the way of our plans for the day, is literally allowing the mistakes of others to control our lives. Each time a big thing doesn't happen or has to happen differently just because we decide to avoid dealing with a little thing that little thing is controlling us. Think about your daily life. How many things are changed or even prevented from happening simply by things that you don't want to, but probably should deal with?

Scary, dangerous, life altering/ending things I can understand not wanting to handle. But something that will only take a couple of minutes to handle and has no other major impact on anything? Just do it and get on with your day.

Synergy and tribal life pt1

Hi. Welcome. You there in the back. Yes, you. Can you hear me okay? Do I need to speak up? Good let's get started.

It has been said that in order to be as successful as we possibly can, it takes an awful lot of synergy. You probably know by now that I don't like to just throw words at people. I like to define them, so that we can all be on the same page.

Synergy quite literally means working together. It is the combined efforts of people or things to create a larger whole than the individual parts. I like to think of the word as s for same and ynergy for energy. I think of it this way because you are using the same energy but getting more done.

We can't afford to be working in multiple directions at once or we will never get anywhere. Doing things efficiently is applying synergy to your goal of getting things done. The most efficient way has the highest synergistic effect on your time. You create this synergy by arranging your errands in the proper order, so that the amount of energy you put out to get things done is the same or less and the time necessary to complete the tasks is less as well.

Another way that synergy can work for you is finding multiple uses for the same tools. With physical tools this means less time and energy spent shopping for new ones and less money spent purchasing them. With the non-physical it means making the thoughts and ideas that you already have in place work for you in new ways, again allowing you to get more out of the same or less effort.

For me this blog serves multiple purposes.

First and foremost, it is my soap box. I plan to change the world. This will happen through a combination of personal growth, life coaching, mentoring, living by example and sharing my results with all of you. With these posts I show you what my point of view is as well as many powerful positive tools for making your own lives better. I don't expect you to just go "huh, that was interesting" and then go on about your daily lives. I expect you to take what I say and make it your own and then make changes to your life accordingly.

I am building a tribe of people that want to make the world a better place, that want to live in a better place and want the world to be better still for our children. And all it takes to join that tribe is a conscious decision to start making your life better, now, not in ten years or six months. Today.

World change starts at your front door, inside your house even. We change the world by changing individuals, who then become examples for other individuals to follow. So these words that I write for you and to you are primarily to give you the tools to do exactly what I am doing.

Balance is not always good

It is my belief that within each person there is an extremely large yet finite amount of energy. The quantity and quality of that energy is different for each person. This energy has two distinct forms. All of the energy within a person is in one or the other of these forms. For our purposes, in this discussion the terms positive and negative will be used. This energy pairing can go by other names such as, love/not love, light/dark, creative/destructive, and even yin/yang.

The law of conservation of energy states that energy can not be created nor can it be destroyed. It can only be converted from one form into another. This is absolutely true of this energy that is within each of us. When we are born, we start out filled from head to toe with love. We are positive energy through and through. As adults this is seldom true anymore. Why?

Believe it or not, the primary reason is due to the fact that people in general do not attempt to create win-win situations with each other. They literally do not care that the other person is unhappy and do not see how it affects them. They simply look for solutions to problems that will benefit them without care for how it affects other people. They reason that it works for them so it must be a good solution. There is more to the situation than that but most people either are not aware of the rest or consciously ignore it.

Let's look at what actually happens. We have a problem. Let's say that before this issue comes up you and I each are completely full of positive energy. We have never had a single negative experience. Then some issue happens. For a time some of both of our stores of positive energy are converted into negative energy due to our displeasure about this issue. Now suppose, I come up with and cause to be implemented a solution that works for me but not for you. I am happy and my negative energy is converted back to positive. I am once again filled with positive energy. AND I either do not notice or do not care that the experience is bad for you.

So after this issue I am still full of positive energy and you are not. You have frustration and resentment over how the issue was handled especially since for you the issue itself may still be ongoing. Now when you deal with issues with other people, you may not be willing to work with them to solve problems due to your bad experience with me. You  definitely are not going to want to work with me to solve problems in the future and if forced to, you are going to look for solutions that work for you with no thought for how well they will work for me. And that will lead to some of my positive energy being converted to negative when the solution is not beneficial to me.

Then we will each go from issue to issue with other people tainting each others' positive energy with negative due to the "required" selfishness that we have each pretty much learned from each other. It goes on and on getting worse with each recursion until eventually there is nearly no positive energy at all and we have the general state of things today with all the hatred, violence and mistrust that we have all created for ourselves.

The negative energy cannot be destroyed. There is no way to "get rid" of it and you can not change the past. What you can do is take new actions, make new choices and new decisions. Seek out win-win solutions in EVERY circumstance regardless of how small it seems to you because you never have any idea how much that thing means to the other person. Each time the other person gets a win when dealing with you, they will be more likely to want to work with you to create a circumstance where everybody wins next time.

When you create a win for everybody involved some of your stores of negative energy are converted back to positive. Do this enough and your energy will approach the positive level it was at while you were a child. Everyday life will become much like paradise. And has it not been said that to enter the gates of heaven one must be as the child?

What is music, to you?

What is it about music?

My singing voice is not all that good. In the past my inability to dance was such that it has caused people around me to ask if I was alright or if they needed to dial 911. And I have not spent enough time with any one instrument to get good at it.

But music...it drives me. I hear it all around me, even in the silences. Music powers its way through my body. It literally flows through my veins as if the notes themselves were liquid fire racing to every corner of my being, bringing me to light and to life.

Heavy metal, techno, classical, jazz, blues, country, salsa,reggae each has its own unique sound. But they are all the same.  Regardless of style they all infuse me with energy and happiness.

To find out what general level of happiness I am at in my life one need only to ask if they have heard me playing music recently or not. The times where I have not been listening to music have all, invariably, been darker times in my life.

I listen to a lot of music that is adult themed, with lyrics not intended for children, things like Lord of Acid or Eminem. Often, I like the lyrics for the point that they make about society, for a message that they can teach, or even for just artistic creativity.

But most of the time the words themselves do not matter to me at all. It is about the volume,tone, pitch and cadence of the sound and the way those things combine with the overall vibrance of the rhythm, the speed and depth of the beat, the way the harmonics converge, diverge and resonate.
It is like the artist is looking into my eyes with their own. And seeing into my soul, they find my soul to be a kindred to theirs. Somehow, they  use the music as a bridge between us, a bridge of perfect knowledge and understanding.

For a brief yet somehow also everlasting moment, we are connected. And in that moment, time stops and the universe turns inside out, exploding outward, in every direction, filled with life and love. We ride waves of energy, energy which we are.  The power of creation fills us and is us. It is orgasmic but not necessarily sexual. We are surrounded by infinite power and ability to shape and control and make anew. Passion, creativity, love, kindness, pure joy, we are in touch with and in fact are all of these things. We can do anything, be anything, create anything, have anything. For a short time, we are in touch with the soul of the universe, we are physically everywhere and part of everything.

Then just as suddenly as it has started it stops. And then the next song begins.

Is it like that every time? No, but it could be. Although I can always feel the music tugging at my heart,  I do not always let go of all the thoughts and cares of life. In the past I have had a habit of getting bogged down in whatever is going on in my life and not letting the music in.  But when I do?

...Yeah. It's always like that.

Music is awesome.

Broken agreements pt2

No matter how hard you try, even when you have just the right amount of commitments in your life, you can not always keep every agreement you make. As we have discussed, ignoring commitments that you can not keep does not work. So what should you do?

There is a basic three step system for handling broken agreements that everyone should follow.  It allows for the highest probability of positive energy flow amongst all participants. These steps are simple yet magickal.

First, acknowledge to whomever that you had the agreement with, that it has been broken. This lets others know that you realize that a commitment has gone awry and that you are not planning to try sweeping it under the rug and moving on.

Second,  give a sincere and heartfelt apology for having broken the commitment. This does a couple of things. It shows empathy  for the feelings that you hurt and contrition for not having kept your word.

Third and most important, set future expectations regarding that commitment.  Options for that are recommitting, renegotiating, or perhaps stating that you are no longer planning on keeping that commitment.

Recommitting is stating that the thing you committed to is still important to you and you still intend to see it through.

Renegotiating is stating that something has changed. You might still be willing to see the commitment through to it's conclusion but some part of the agreement is going to have to change for that to be true. Either it is not as important to you now as it was before, or not as important as you thought it was. Or some facet of the world surrounding the agreement has changed to make it seem less important to you. It is at this point that you offer the other person or persons involved the opportunity to work with you in changing the agreement to be more inline with the current vision of things.

If you are not willing to recommit and you or the other parties involved are not willing to renegotiate then the only option left is stating that the commitment will go unfulfilled. This might seem like previously where we discussed ignoring a commitment. But it is not. We are directly confronting the circumstance and clearly stating our intentions. When we do this, the commitment at hand dissolves and the energy that is tied up with it returns to all parties involved.

So to recap. Make commitments in your life in moderation, balancing the pros and cons and look for the places in your life where new commitments will fit in with old ones.  Do your best to keep your word. But, when  an agreement has been broken do not despair. Simply acknowledge, apologize and set future expectations.

This pattern of behavior will allow others to see you as an honest, reliable, trustworthy and valuable addition to both their business and personal lives. And isn't that how we truly want things to be?
As always thank you for visiting me and see you next time.

Broken agreements pt1

Welcome back for our discussion about broken agreements. What is a broken agreement? It is a promise, a commitment,  that has been made but not kept. A person's word was given and then broken. What's the big deal anyways, you can just say sorry and then move on right? Not exactly. It is more complicated than that.

But first, how do things like this happen? What are the reasons for broken commitments? Sometimes, when people make a commitment, they are saying yes with their lips but no with their minds. They are agreeing to what they are being asked but, so strongly do not want to do what they are being asked, that if they were being honest with themselves, they would know they are not going to see it through.  Or they DO know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are not going to keep it. They are just saying whatever it takes to get the other person off their back. Also, as we discussed before, sometimes people make too many commitments. They do actually want to do everything they said they would, it just simply isn't possible.  Another possibility is that the person that made the original commitment may have had a change of heart or circumstance. They may have been committed to making it happen before but no longer feel that way or are no longer capable of making it happen.

Most of the time when agreements are broken, do you know how they are handled? They aren't. That's right. The agreement is simply ignored as if it had never been made.  Well that is not entirely true. On the surface it seems like the agreement is being ignored. See when you make a commitment you and whoever else  are involved are each tying some of your personal energy into seeing that a thing happens. You tell a friend that you will make sure to bring them something special back from your vacation to Italy because they didn't get to go with you. It is a small thing. But you and your friend both have energy tied to that commitment.  If you come back from vacation without that special something that you promised them, your agreement is broken. You realize that you forgot while you were there and you can't change it now, but you feel embarrassed. So you decide not to mention it. Your friend is a little upset that you didn't keep your word, but doesn't want to seem like a nag or someone who is only interested in material possessions. So, they don't say anything either.  But that bit of guilt and embarrassment on your part and hurt on their part is now tied to that circumstance. It is part of each of your personal stores of energy that does not come back to you.

When your commitments are fulfilled, the energy that you have tied to it comes back to you and helps you to be prepared to meet future commitments. When you fail to keep your commitments you have less and less personal energy for future commitments. People that do not keep their commitments tend to have lower energy levels. They give it out but do not get it back. So eventually they can't keep up. They are tired all the time, depressed and unmotivated. Take a minute and think about the people in your life. Look for the pattern I am describing. It is not that hard to see, if you know to look.

Due to the ever changing nature of the world around us and all the people we come in contact with, it is virtually impossible to keep every agreement we make. That is just a fact.  So, how then do you get that energy back? Ignoring the agreement obviously isn't the answer. The trick is in how you handle an agreement once you have come to the realization that it has been or must be broken.

Tomorrow we will talk about the three basic steps to handling a broken agreement in a mature responsible manner that empowers you and those around you.