Recently, Apple allowed authors with books published on their iBookStore to use promo codes. A stable and very popular feature for iOS developers who published their apps in AppStore, promo codes were unavailable for iBookStore until now. I confess I was a bit confused on how to use these promo codes, since there is no iBooks app on Mac OS. Usually, I was using my iTunes on the Mac to redeem the promo codes for apps in AppStore, but without a similar thing for ibooks, I just had to scratch my head a bit.

Fortunately, it proved to be a much simpler process than I thought. In fact, it has only 2 simple steps. Here we go:

Step 1: Find The Redeem Button

For that, you should open the iBooks app (on your iPhone or iPad). If you’re on the “Library” mode, browsing the ebooks you already bought, touch the “Store” button and make sure you’re on the Apple store and not on your local device. Once you get there, touch the first tab button in the navigation tab bar on the bottom of the screen. It is the one called “Featured”. Now scroll all the way down to the bottom, and voila: the “Redeem” button magically appears.

Step 2: Enter Your Promo Code

Now, after touching the “Redeem” button, you’ll be taken to a new screen, pretty much similar with the one below:

After you entered your promo code, you will (hopefully) get a message saying that your item is downloading. What iBooks does is that it automatically matches the product with your promo code, looks it up in the store and starts downloading it. In a few seconds, if you have a good internet connection, your book will be available in the Library. Here’s how your iPhone screen should look like after the entire process finished:

That’s it.

One of the biggest lies of my life was this one: if you do your job constantly, if you listen to your folks obediently, nothing bad will happen to you. All you have to do in order to live a happy life is to play by the rules and everyone around you will do the same. If you listen to life, life will listen to you and will reward you back big time.

Well, guess what, it didn’t actually happen like this. I mean, I did my best to be obedient, to follow the rules, to do my job and not to harm anyone else, and yet, out of the blue, I got kicked straight in my ass. And not only once.

I’m sure you’ve been there too. And not only once. You did your job too, minding your own business, fulfilling your roles as a friend, employee or husband and then, kaboom, life hits you right in the groin, not only filling your entire being with unbearable pain, but also leaving you breathless, confused and defeated. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about business, about relationships or friendships or you name it. Sometimes you just get hit. At some point, if you’re a business man, competition will play dirty. Or employees will let you down. In your personal life, the persons you trust (or care for) the most will lie to you or dump you. In your casual circle, a friend will suddenly betray you. It will happen.

For a long time, I thought I didn’t do the right thing… you know, righteously enough. I thought I didn’t follow all the rules, or that I somehow misunderstood something. I thought it was my fault. This is what they teach you, anyways. If what you do doesn’t solve the problem, just use a bigger hammer. So I strived even harder. But surprise. Nothing changed.

As life unfolded, the tiny little crack I was just glimpsed at, became larger and larger. It looked like no matter what I did, the gap between what I expected and what I actually got grew bigger and bigger. It became obvious there wasn’t a direct link, or any causality whatsoever, between my obedience to the rules and the bad things that were happening to me.

To make a long story short, it took me a ginormous amount of time to realize that life really is random. That you can’t control it. That you can’t influence events. They will always happen somewhere outside you.

Oh, my god, stop it right here! Blasphemy!

How can someone who writes about goals, living a better life and improving your skills can come up with such an enormity? You can’t do anything about events? You just have to sit there and endure whatever comes in your face?

Well, not so fast, Jose, not so fast.

I didn’t say anything about what YOU have to do. I said something about events. About things that are happening to you. Those things, believe it or not, you aren’t able to control.

You can’t control the stock market. But you can see how she moves and take advantage of some opportunities.

You can’t control the weather (not unless you can detonate a huge atomic bomb, or generate a volcano eruption, that is). But you can assess the changes, evaluate them and then act on them. Put on lighter clothes if it’s getting warmer or take an umbrella if it’s going to rain.

You can’t control the behavior of your clients, if you run a business, not to mention competition. But you can observe the competition moves, read your customer feedbacks and then do whatever you have to do advance.

Are you with me now?

Truth is we have a very limited sphere of direct influence in this world. If you really look at it, it’s just a tiny bubble around us. You can control your body, your clothes, your moves. You can control your balance and your visual sensors as you walk outside of a building, for instance, but you can’t control a potential brick that may fall right into your head from the top of that building. You can observe it, of course, and avoid it. But the brick will be outside of your control zone.

The Randomness Of Life

We get a lot of “bricks form the top of the building” in our lives. We can spot some of them and timely avoid the impact. But some of them are invisible and we just get hit.

In the beginning, I was shocked by this discovery. The randomness of life seemed frightening. I thought I was helpless. I suddenly went to the other side and started to believe that no matter what I do, a brick will always fall down from the sky and ruin it. Of course it didn’t. So it took me a while to understand the meaning of the term “randomness” and also to adjust my position towards it.

And that’s how I started to study the “long lost art of adaptation”. Of course I don’t know if there is such an art, I just made it up. It made you click on the title, didn’t it?

Anyway, back to our story: art or science, adaptation is not only key to survival (as any serious biologist will confirm it for you) but it’s also important if you want to make the best of what you get. It’s at least a key skill and, as such, I firmly believe that it can be taught.

Without further ado, here’s a (crash) course on how to enhance your adaptability skills:

1. If Something Feels Like (Or Really Is) Wrong, Accept It First

Don’t fight evidence. If you get hit by a crisis, please admit that you are hit by a crisis and this is exactly what is happening to you. Don’t treat like an injustice. Don’t even think in terms of luck or bad luck. From a tiny point of view, at the exact moment of that event, it may feel like an injustice, but on a larger scale, it’s just another event in your life. So, instead of whining, crying and complaining about how bad life is treating you, just accept it. It’s another part of your life. It may be painful now, but it’s still your life.

2. Always Assess

After accepting it, start looking around and see what can really happen. Evaluate the harm done (or potential). Try to predict. Try to see what might go wrong. Or good. I can’t really remember any event in my life which was entirely good. Or bad. A wedding can be a good event, but if there’s a divorce 5 years later, well, I don’t know… Losing all your money may seem like a terrible thing to happen, but if you look at how this forced you to change your way of life, it may be something to ponder there…

3. Unfold Plausible Scenarios

After assessing, try to understand what you can do in the newly unfolded circumstances. But don’t limit yourself to just one thing. Don’t try to find the perfect solution. Make a few scenarios. Even better, try to develop a way of thinking in scenarios, whether you’re in a crisis or not. It will make miracles for your morale, believe me. Just try to project as many variables as you can. Don’t let anything out. Don’t believe in “this will never happen to me”. Everything you can imagine, can actually become an event.

4. Act, Don’t React

Accepting the catastrophe, assessing the damage, creating a few plausible scenarios, well, it’s not enough. You gotta act. Acceptance in itself will do nothing. Assessing in itself will do nothing as well. Those possible scenarios, as detailed and complete as they may be, won’t mean nothing. It’s action that changes things. So, just go ahead and make your best pick out of those scenarios. Just play your hand.

5. Rinse And Repeat

Once you acted, you’re already in a new context. Enjoy it. Be there, watch the surroundings and be ready for anything. It may be that the scenario wasn’t as good as you thought it may be. Ok, back to square number one. Try plan B. Or it may be that the plan really worked and now you’re out of the dangerous zone. Just be there and be alert. Enjoy what you have and live the best life you can live.

For it may fall apart again in a split of a second.

Every once in a while, I get to be involved in specific online events. Sometimes it’s about collective projects, sometimes it’s about some interesting memes and sometimes it’s about specific sales events. This post is about one of these sales events. How are these are working? In short, you put together some top-notch experts in a specific niche, and then try to convince them to lower the price of their products, for a very short amount of time, and to create what I call  a “window sale”. In other words, a very appealing value, concentrated in a short time span.

The Package

The sale event I’m part of it now it’s called “Best Empowering Tools” (obviously) and what makes it stand out is the very high level of the participants (i.e. the people who are putting together their best works in this huge package). The sale is hosted by Barrie Davenport, from the LiveBoldAndBloom fame and Stephanie Wetzel from TradingPounds.com. I was kinda late to the party, so you won’t see my face in their nice web wall there (like you don’t get to see my face enough on this very blog or Twitter/Facebook, doh ). But you will see my products, down there, on the 25th spot.

I’m contributing not one, not two, not three, but exactly four products to this event, namely: Natural Productivity, Brilliantly Better, 100 Ways To Live A Better Life and 100 Ways To Screw Up Your Life. Just click on the links if you’re interested to know more about them.

But enough about me. Let’s talk a bit about the rest of the gang.

With some of the contributors in Best Empowering Tools I’m a close (online) friend. That includes Steven Aitchison (who was kind enough to include me in his top 50 self-improvement blogs of 2011), DirkdeBruin (aka Diggy, from UpgradeReality.com) or Jonathan Wells. Also, I’m happy to see Marelisa Fabrega in there (she was also kind enough to give away for FREE one of her ebook to the readers of my blog, just go to the downloads page and scroll down) as well as Jonathan Mead, from Illuminated Mind, Anastasiya Goers, Evelin Lym (with whom I kick-started my first massive guest posting experiment, two years ago). I won’t go on with all the 25, but I won’t stop before mentioning other very common names in the self-improvement / productivity area, like PicktheBrain.com, Henrik Edberg from PositivityBlog.com or Charlie Gilkey, from ProductiveFlourishing.com. They’re all giving away some of their best products in this window sale.

The reason I’m not mentioning the rest, is not that they are not at least as good as the ones I’ve talked about so far, but because, as they teach you in all the good sales courses: you don’t have to make them drink, you have to make them thirsty.

So, my goal is not to make you click on one of the links to Best Empowering Tools (although I won’t be upset at all if you do) but to reach down into yourself and try to answer to one question: “What am I going to change this year?”. If you find the answer, that will be enough for me. And if you find the answer, just keep in mind that you have now an opportunity to get the best support you can imagine for pursuing these goals, in the form of a huge collection of ebooks, courses, DVDs and videos. There’s one catch, though (it’s always a catch, I know): the sale will last only three days. It starts today, January the 16th and it will close on January the 19th.

Now, the last thing you should worry about (and that’s the reason I’m putting it like at the very end of the post) it’s the price. The combined value of these products is well over $1000. But you get it for a measly $97. Yeap, feel free to re-read that. It’s $97 for $1000. You do the math.

The catch? It will only last for 3 days. So, go ahead and check out this package.

Thank me later.

The Premises

So, here I am, on a nice Monday morning, unpacking my laptop over a nice small table at my favorite Starbucks, arranging my cup of tea and plugging in the cable. Around, a few people at their own tables, most of them with their own laptops, tapping silently. Soft music, nice light, a perfect atmosphere for working.

I’m at the first floor (this Starbucks has two floors, and the top one is less crowded) and, at this exact moment, a young fellow, with a hoodie on, jumps over the stairs, looks at the toilet door (which was closed) and then turns at me. He smiles and waves, almost greeting me. A microsecond of browsing through my (I admit, quite large) database of persons that I know and a definitive result: I don’t know this guy. I politely look over him, while he came forward and take a sit on a bench just in front of me. 2-3 meters maximum. He must wait for the toilet, I presume.

Confusions happens, I tell to myself, then I start working. After a few minutes, a gentle sensation over my forehead interrupts me. I get this sometimes, when people are looking at me. I take my eyes out from the computer and, surprise, the young fellow is still there, staring at me. The toilet door was open, so he must’ve already been there, I think. I browse through my internal database again, only to get the same result: I definitely don’t know this guy. And yet there he is, smiling and looking at me. The hoodie is off, it’s getting warm.

I get back to my computer and continue to work. But not for long. My forehead sensation was still there. I take my eyes off from the laptop and this time I make eye contact. The same second he slips his look over me, avoiding eye contact. Hmm… I gently look around, take a tea sip and there it is again, with the corner of my eye I see him staring at me again. I try eye contact again and then he avoids it again.

Around, business as usual. Nobody seemed to perceive nothing strange. They either thought this guy is with me (somehow), or his behavior looked quite normal.

At this point, I started to identify the whole situation with some sort of a problem. I can’t really work when somebody is staring at me. So, I started to evaluate the possible reasons for this. After a few seconds, I identified 3 possible causes.

1. He’s probably gay. And really, really lonely.

Not much to do about this, I’m straight so I may just tell him that.

2. I’m on candid camera.

I’m turning around looking for places where they could hide a camera. Trying to figure out which of the people at the tables were accomplices. After a few minutes of gazing, I had to admit I wasn’t on candid camera. Nobody looked like a candid camera crew (I worked for a while in television, so I kinda sense this stuff). Also, on candid camera, at some point they come at you and tell: “Hey, man, you’re on candid camera!”. This guy didn’t. He just continued to look at me.

2. He must be on ecstasy.

As far as I could tell, his eyes were ok, didn’t notice any shaking or other strange movements, so he didn’t seem like he was on drugs. I’m not too experienced at this, though, so I didn’t rule it out completely.

As I was still trying to find out the number 4 reason, all of a sudden he gets out, turns on his heels and down he goes, over the stairs. He just left. I confess I had a huge relief breathe and gently came back to my work. Incidentally, it was one of those days when I had a full plate, so to speak, so there was a lot to be done.

After a few minutes, the foreground sensation again. Ok, somebody is looking at me again, I’m saying to myself. Who could it be? In front of me, the bench was empty. Another short relief breathe and then I turn to the right. And there he was again, the hoodie fellow, with a cup of tea and a sandwich, on the bench next to me. Not more than one meter between us now.

I felt a bit of an emptiness in my stomach and then instinctively looked to my screen, not understanding one thing of what I was looking at, but desperately trying to understand what was going on.

The Interaction

It must have been more than a half an hour since I was at that Starbucks, so I decided to tackle this somehow. I suddenly turn to the right, and this time he can’t avoid eye contact anymore.

“Can I help you?” I ask upfront. Trying not to be angry, just polite.

“Oh, no, not at all.” he shivers, looking surprised that I actually opened up a conversation with him. Like he didn’t expected this to happen. The he continues to stare at me.

“Are you sure?” I ask again, this time a little bit angry.

“Oh, yes! I’m absolutely sure.” he answers, somehow realizing that he must’ve been on some sort of a faux pax. And then he looks the other way. I stay turned for around 10 seconds and I make sure he won’t stare at me anymore. And, apparently, it worked.

I get back to my work, but only with half of my focus now. I still sense this guy, no more than one meter away from me, watching his cup of tea, eating his sandwich and staring randomly around. Every once in a while at me, too, but this time he looked a bit more controlled.

At this point, one of my partners in WPSumo came in (we had to finish something together) and, being already cautious, I invite him to sit down on my bench, between me and that guy. Of course, my partner has no idea about what’s going on and I decide not to tell.

We start working, but, after ten minutes or so, I suddenly see my partner’s eyes growing bigger and bigger behind his glasses. He elbows me pointing to that bench: “Have you seen this guy? He’s sleeping”. I lean forward and there he is, the hoodie guy, on his left side, one hand under his head, knees almost to the chest, in the embryo position. He didn’t look completely asleep, but hey, he was still lying down on a Starbucks bench.

The next second he rolls over his back, face up and then his hands are starting a strange dance in the air. Very, very slowly, he was picking objects and then rearranging them in other places. Invisible objects, of course. Think Tom Cruise in Minority Report, only sitting on his back. The other people on the room started to notice this. Some of theme were smiling, some of theme were pointing their fingers to the head: “he must be screwed up there”. But that didn’t seem to stop that slow, almost hypnotic dance.

At this point, a waitress came in, starting to clean up tables. As I know her (I do spend a lot of time there, so we kinda have small conversations every once in a while), I ask her upfront:

“What’s up with this guy?”

“Oh, I guess nothing”, she replies. After that, she leans forward to see the slow Minority Report dance and adds, just a bit worried: “Well, I hope nothing. It’s just… how he is. Does he bothers you?”

I decided to answer “no” to this question. We went on with our work, finished what we had to do like in 20 minutes and split. I could’ve stay longer, but, somehow, the staring guy, as inoffensive as he was, made me not to.

The Hoodie Guy And The Goals

As I was heading home, I tried to understand what was that bothered me so much about this encounter. After all, like the waitress pointed out, he was harmless. He was just staring at me. A simple presence, just a look, a harmless surveillance.

And the moment I found the word “surveillance”, it hit me: it was the pressure of the expectations. I didn’t know exactly what this guy was asking from me. But, somehow, I was afraid I couldn’t deliver. As simple as it was, that was the exact thing that made me feel so uncomfortable. If I wouldn’t feel that I had to do something in a certain way, I wouldn’t be bothered at all. I might’ve even look back at him for hours too. Or stare at the walls.

Almost frightened, as I was walking back home, I realized how many times I did this, not outside, with other people, but inside, in my own mind. How many times I created an observer, a person who was expecting me to act in a certain way, only to get completely stuck when he was staring at me too much.

How many times I created bold goals, literally creating dozens of hoodie guys, bringing them into my own room, and making them stare at me, until I was delivering. And celebrating big time after that.

There is a certain weight in establishing bold goals. There is a certain (unnecessary) pressure in creating bigger and bigger standards. The bigger the standard, the longer the gaze of the hoodie guy. At some point, you kinda get fed out with all that staring and just walk away.

Sometimes, we just need a balanced interaction between our goals and our resources. Too many hoodie guys in the room will make you feel uncomfortable. The pressure will be too big. And, at some point, you’ll give up.

It’s way better to negotiate your goals every once in a while. Like in telling the hoodie guy to just give you a break. And then secretly watch him arrange invisible objects with his hands while you get on with other stuff.

Now, quit staring at this blog post. It’s embarrassing

I still have a very clear recollection of both the actual device and the context which lead to its acquisition. It was a black box with the cassette tray on the left side, with the speaker on the right side (it was an ellipse shaped speaker, I remember how I peaked through the small holes of the black plastic mask and realize the form which has letting the sound out). It also had a transparent radio scale with all the frequencies painted on it. A round knob on the right was moving (by the means of some complicated plastic wheels and thin strings) a small red line on top of that scale, so you know which frequency you were listening to. It was mono, of course, in 1974 having a stereo device would have been extremely difficult. The cassette was manipulated with a line of silver buttons, on top of the tray. One of them would open the tray, while the others were helping you play, record and rewind the tape.

We bought it, (actually, my dad bought it) one summer when we were on vacation at the Black Sea. At that time, Black Sea was a popular destination among other countries in the communist block. Many people from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia were coming along. The political police wasn’t so obvious and many small things were still tolerated. Like a nudist beach in each resort, which, usually, was also the place where a little bit of black market could be seen. I don’t know why the black market was always around the nudist beaches, but this is how it was.

The Negotiation

One day we went on a walk, me and my father, to see what was going on at one of these “bissie-nissie“ (a covert term for ”business“ of course) places. I remember that I got chewing gum and I was making bubbles. My father was looking very carefully at all the stuff lined up on black teeshirts on one side of the beach. At some point, he saw a small black box and he asked for the price. He didn’t know any English, and, apparently, the seller didn’t know any English too. But they were waving around hands and fingers and they were also drawing numbers in the sand, erasing them quickly with their feet, once they were sure the other part got it right. My father asked for a short demonstration and the seller put a small thing into the black box, pushed some buttons and, miracle, the black box started to sing. I was amazed.

We went back to our place on the beach and my dad started to talk with my mom. He took a small purse (which was holding the money, I was going to find out soon) and we went back to the bissie-nissie place. This time we went straight to the seller place, which was a small room in one of the hotels lined up on the beach. They started to talk. Again, they didn’t speak any English and the seller native language was very strange (it was Polish). But they were talking like 15 minutes and apparently they were thoroughly enjoying it. They were both smiling and laughing. Twenty years later I learned that what was going on in that room was called negotiation. At some point, my dad took out the money from the purse and put it down. The color of the bills, wrapped up in a moderately big package, was blue. I remember that very clear. The seller wasn’t smiling anymore and he didn’t look quite happy. But as my father was still talking, smiling and waving his hands, the grumpiness on the face of the seller started to fade. The money package was still on the floor. After a few minutes, the seller made a funny face, something that was clearly saying ”well, what the heck“, took the money and gave the black box to my father. We walked out of the room with my very first music device. The silver top of it had a strange word, with red letters: Jola 2.

For the next few years, that music device took a very prominent place in my day to day life. Names like ABBA, Boney M and others became common in my vocabulary. I soon learned how to play a cassette, how to record music from the radio, or even from the device’s microphone, starting my own proto-podcast. I was about 5 years old. The audio cassettes were still fragile at that time and the technology of that Jola 2 wasn’t very advanced, so, every once in a while, the tape was stuck inside. I learned how to take out the tape and use a crayon to rewind the tape again inside the cassette. Of course, once the tape was wrinkled, the sound wasn’t that good anymore.

The Problem

As years went by, the Jola 2 approached its end. At some point, it just stopped working. I had no idea why. But my father took a screwdriver, took out the back side and started to look inside, with just a soldering gun and a lot of patience.

I remember my first encounter with the inside of the cassette recorder. It was so colorful inside, so full of wires and strange shapes that I just couldn’t take my eyes out of it. I stayed near my father and watched how he slowly started to dismantle it, piece by piece, wire by wire. It was obvious he didn’t have any idea about how it’s working. Other than: ”this might be the power wires, they must be the power wires. Now, where do they have to go?“. He really had no idea how the whole device was working, but he had an incredible stubborness and patience. After the first few evenings (he was still working all day and he had time for the ”cassette repairing“ only late in the evening) I just gave up and went away, finding other ways to fill my time. But my father stood there and he even started to look at the electrical scheme (a huge piece of paper filled with strange symbols).

After a few weeks, in one of those long evenings in which my father was completely immersed inside the cassette recorder (sometimes  felt like he was literally inside that box, eaten up by those colored wires and shapes, melting inside the delicate electrical engines) well, one of these nights, I heard music again. I was so surprised that I was looking outside the room. Nope, it wasn’t coming from the inside. My father actually repaired the cassette recorder. It was working again.

I was so shocked that I couldn’t ask my dad how he did it. He just did, and that was all that counted for me. Before he put on the black panel I took a final look at the inside of Jola 2. It was as colorful as I remembered it, but now there were some new things popping up. In some places there were some new wires added, while in others there was something resembling to metal stitches. It was changed, that’s for sure. But it worked again.

After Jola 2 I also had a Kashtan, a Russian magnetophone on which I listened to rock music for the first time, but that’s another story.

The Business Approach

Around the age of 30, after I was rambling around, doing pretty much nothing with my life, I decided to become a business man. I started from scratch an online publishing company, which at its peak was the third player in the market. After 10 years, I sold it for a profit.

Starting it, making it work and then growing it wasn’t easy at all. But as I grew, both in terms of experience and lucidity, I started to realize something. It was related to my first cassette recorder, of course.

First: the negotiation in that room was something extremely important. If you go out and ask every business man which is the most powerful tool in a negotiation, they will always tell you: ”cash“. Cash is king. As a four year old kid I had absolutely no idea about it, of course. But I did recall the strange discussion between my dad and the Polish seller. As I was going to find out soon, in my own business, each negotiation is the same: both parties are just talking in their own language. There is seldom a real communication between them (that’s why my father and that guy were able to understand each other, although they didn’t speak each other language). But the moment my dad put the money package on the floor, everything changed. In a few minutes, the other guy made that funny face, like ”well, what the heck“, took the money and gave us the device. In other terms, we closed the deal.

I used this, unconsciously, in many deals as a business man. To this very moment, for me, cash is the most powerful tool in a negotiation.

Second, it was the ”breaking up“ moment. The moment the cassette recorder stopped to work. As a business man, I experienced a lot of crisis. Sometimes it was a cash crisis, sometimes it was a market crisis, sometimes it was all of that and even more. And each time I had a crisis, I also applied unconsciously the same approach as my father. Took up the back panel, dive into it without any knowledge of the problem, but with an iron like desire to make it work again. Studied the causes, did a lot of trial and error, sometimes drastically modifying the inside of the music box, but, after a certain period of time, the music was on again. I think you may call this discipline and stubborness. Without it, I highly doubt that any business can advance.

The Selective Recollection

We tend to select from our past the supporting memories. I’m sure there were a lot of details to be remembered from both the negotiation part and the breaking up of the device. I’m sure I could’ve remember the hotel room paintings or the color of the carpet (since I did remember the color of money package) or even the face of the Polish seller. I’m also sure that I could remember the shape of the table at which my father sat while he tried to fix the Jola 2.

But nope. I did remember what I needed to. Which is another way of saying that we have all the resources we need. We literally have access to an endless reservoir of inspiring and supporting examples in our own lives.

Each and every situation in our lives carries the seeds of something important. Just be aware and look carefully.

I guarantee that if you do it, the music will never stop.

Or, to be more precise, “An Tan Tiri Mogo Dan, Cara Cara Si, Princi Pa Ta Morin Go. Tan Go!”

In case you didn”t live in the Romania of the seventies, chances to know the meaning of those words are close to zero. Ok, it’s a “countdown”. You don”t know what a “countdown” is? It”s a sequence of apparently bogus words, spoken in a certain rhythm, almost like a song, each word being assigned to a certain person. Or, to be even more precise, to a certain kid, because this countdown is actually one of my strongest childhood memories.

Let me explain how this countdown thing worked: suppose we were 7 kids, and we wanted to play “hide and seek”. We had of course to pick one of us to be the actual searcher. For that, we gathered in a circle and one of us started the “countdown”: “an” -> the first one in the circle was tagged, “tan” -> the second one was tagged, “tiri” -> the third one was tagged, and so on, until we reached the final “go”. The kid that was tagged with that final “go” was out of the circle, sparred from the tedious job of being the searcher. Now there were only six kids left. So, we started to countdown over the circle again, until only one kid was left. That was the searcher. As simple as that.

Above All Doubt

We used “countdowns” in many ways. Whenever we had to pick someone for something, and all of our rational selection processes were ineffective, we resorted to the “countdown”. It was our universal selection process. We used it when we had to pick soccer teams for our afternoon soccer games in the school yard. We used it when we had to pick the teams for the ping-pong matches on the concrete table in front of the block. We even used it in school, to pick the one that had to be on duty for the week.

I don’t know who invented that specific countdown and I’m pretty sure the words were completely random and meaningless. Maybe they had to be meaningless, otherwise the magical power of the “countdown” was weakened. I think it was more like an incantation, a borderline magical stuff.

Once we finished a “countdown”, its results were above all doubt. Nobody could contest them. It was final. In a subtle and unexplainable way, the “countdown” was the glue that was keeping us together. Eventually, all our conflicts were solved with a countdown. And nobody would ever contest it.

The Collapsing World

But, as we grew up, we noticed that some of the kids were somehow luckier than others. They seemed to be surrounded by this magical chance: never picked to be on duty at school, always in the best soccer team, never the searcher at “hide and seek”. Hmm…

It didn’t take long to find out that, if you were doing a fast mental calculus, you could actually “predict” which kid will be the last one tagged. So, the “luckier” kids were just doing these mental calculations and they were starting the countdown each time from the “appropriate” kid. Like that, they knew how to manipulate the countdown, so they were the first ones out, if the task was tedious, or the first ones in, if the soccer team was the best one. Think of counting cards in a casino, but much simpler than that.

When I first realized that, I was shocked. My entire world collapsed. What once was above any doubt, now was questionable, to say the least. My small and simple universe was literally shaken apart.

The Modern Countdown

But I survived. It wasn’t the first nor the last perfect image of my childhood universe that was trashed away. Time passed by and I soon had more interesting adventures to pursue than the soccer in the school yard, the ping-pong at the concrete table or even the all mighty “hide and seek”. Among these new adventures: girls, getting into college and finding my first job.

But, in some remote corner of my unconscious mind, the mantra of the “countdown” was still very powerful. I think I was well into my thirties when I realized that. Only now the mechanism was a little bit changed.

Now, I realized that every time I was in a situation which was unsolvable by rational processes, I was always resorting to my own personal mantra. For instance, when I was having heavy problems in my own business, like clients not paying, stretching the business beyond my means or employees leaving for better salaries, I was always resorting to some sort of personal mantra. Sometimes it was “everything will be allright, I just know it”. Sometimes it was “you gotta hit the bottom if you want to bounce higher”. And sometimes it was “I’ll go through this, no matter what”.

I was repeating those mantras to myself, the same way we were doing countdowns as kids. I was just expecting it to work, because it had to. Like the countdown, my unconscious mind invested that mantra with universal powers. It was above all doubt.

But I wasn’t a kid anymore. And the realities surrounding me were now far more complexes than a soccer game in the afternoon or a short shot of “hide and seek”. Mantras, as much as I wanted them to work, were useless. They had this power to keep me going for a while, just like the countdowns did until I realized they can be manipulated, but in the end I had to surrender. Just like my childhood universe collapsed when I realized that other kids were playing us because they knew more or they were faster at calculus, each of my mantras were trashed away but the existing realities.

In the end, I was able to overcome pretty much every adverse situation (except the ones which are still unfolding as we speak, which is, of course, another story). But I did this outside the mantras. I did this by facing the facts, accepting the outcome and weighing my odds, in a cold and calculated way. I manipulated the countdown in my favor, starting it again and again, until I found the favorable positions.

There is no magic mantra. There is no lucky shot at your command. There is nothing except your own strength and honesty. There isn’t even this post. Don’t believe it. Don’t make a mantra or countdown out of it.

Because I wrote it only to manipulate you. I counted all the words in such a way that it puts me in a better position. I’m out now .

The Twelfth Monkey

This was the December monkey. If you followed my blog or social media presence, you may have noticed that I was extremely quiet during the month of December. I hardly wrote 3 blog posts and had very few social media interactions. It was almost like October, when the monkey was “talk less and do more”. But it was also different from October.

In other words, I didn’t pick up a monkey for December. Or, if you like it this way, the December monkey was to have no monkey at all. So, not much to write about it. Other than living a regular life and doing my stuff each and every day, there’s nothing more to tell. Sometimes, writing about stuff can make it obsolete, up to the point you’re not into it anymore. Keeping a log, a personal journal, even a public blog, can definitely help you achieve more and stay on course. I know I was a very strong advocate of this and I still am. But for every up there’s a down. For every peak there’s a valley and for every explosion there must be an implosion.

Writing too much, like I did on this blog for the last three years, may be alienating. It’s like projecting your desired life into writing, instead or living it. Blogging, like every other part of our existence, needs balance. It needs a sense of reality and equilibrium. I know many of you are visiting this blog almost daily, looking for inspiration. Creating inspiring texts is easy for me. I can do it the same way they build cars, ten per day. But at the same time, I need my own life, with its own boundaries and personal challenges. With its secrets and concealed spots. I don’t know if this is a universal fact, but for me, having a personal space proved to be extremely important. So, sharing too much, about too much, for too much time, it’s not a good thing. At least for me. And when it comes to inspiration, I’d rather create it on the spot, if there’s a real, internal need for it. From my part, that is. Not forced from external circumstances.

The Taming Monkey Experiment Results

I think the hardest part in evaluating an experiment, any type of experiment, is in the metrics. What exactly are you measuring? What are the “in” values and what are the “out” values? Since this was by definition a very foggy experiment, in which the actual elasticity was more important than its precision, I think I’m just gonna give a bird eye view of what happened. In other words, there won’t be a recap of all the experiments and an exact evaluation of each of them. You can just go ahead and read all of them, if you’re interested in a more exact evaluation.

It Worked

First of all, the experiment was a success. The mere fact that I gave up the quantitative part of my life (do “more” stuff) had a huge effect. I stopped blaming myself every time something didn’t go as expected. I stopped beating myself up every time I wasn’t up to something. And that is something I did constantly, at least for the last 20 years of my life. By replacing my goals with a pack of monkeys, I shifted from a one-two-three evaluation of my life, to a more playful and guilt free approach. I may not have accomplished more, but I lived more.

Fears And Liabilities

Second, I finally faced some of my deepest fears and liabilities. You know, when you surround yourself with “stuff” you did, you tend to forgot that you have an imperfect nature. You even start to think that you’re ok, just because you did all that stuff. Which, of course, is nothing but stuff. You still have your unfinished businesses from childhood, your apprehensions, your taboos. So, when I finally gave up the “look how much I accomplished this year” approach, which was like some sort of pressure on top of my hidden fears, keeping them deep inside, they finally exploded.

So, I had to face the fact that sometimes relationships are going to disappear, to melt away. And that moment, the second they’re gone, is the best moment for you and you should just accept and move on. Don’t cling to the past. It’s gone. It’s like a rock going down in the ocean. If you keep clinging yourself to that precious rock, you’ll always be with it but you’ll eventually die. This year was about my last long term personal relationship, which ended up with a divorce, but also the relationship with my son, which entered a “no man’s land”. Both were meant to go like this. But I kinda desperately cling on to what I thought it was something worth to preserve, only to find myself choking on my own memories. A good thing to mention though, was the fact that I kept all my promises involved in these relationships. Which were completely useless for the other part and only meaningful for me, but I still kept it. Good for my morale, anyway.

Another liability was my attachment to my public image. Without even noticing, I was convinced that there must be a link between what I do and my public image. Which is completely wrong, of course. What I do is something that I can control myself, whereas what others are thinking or writing about me, is something that I have no control over it. So, the link is inexistent. For the last 5-6 years I’ve had a fair share of violent attacks on the blogosphere and, lately, even from my own son. My public image was seriously hit. Well, it may safely stay hit, if you’re asking me now. I finally understood that there’s nothing of value in keeping a balanced public image. After all, people are free to say whatever they want about whoever they want. If somebody thinks I’m an idiot, he’s right. If somebody thinks I’m a genius, he’s also right. Do I agree with both? Nope. I agree only with what I think about myself, and I leave the public image to those who have enough time to build me one. As good or as bad they want it to be.

There were many other fears and inner liabilities that were revealed during this year, but I’ll just stick to those two above for the time being.

Slashing Away Chimeras

Third, I realized that some things I started but never finished, well, they never worth finish. One of the monkeys was about finishing a fiction book. Never finished it, of course. I applied all my internal discipline (and, oh, I know I can be freakin’ disciplined when I want to) but nothing really happened. Another internal chimera. Just because we are linking this unfinished thing to a positive context in our mind, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good thing to do. Finishing a fiction ebook was something that was very positive inside my head. But it was also just an image, a positive context in which I was projecting myself. The moment I actually started to write it, I realized it was shallow, thin and ego-driven. So, I stopped the whole process.

Back To Curiosity

Another subtle effect of this experiment was that it allowed me to resort to curiosity again. I said it many times and I will say it again, I don’t consider myself a very skilled individual in any area, although I do know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff, but I do consider myself almost pathologically curious. I’m attracted to many apparently unrelated areas, and, in the process, I learn and achieve a lot.

By stepping away from the traditional fixed goal structure, and replacing it with a “monkey taming” approach, I allowed myself to just be curious again. If I really look back to last year, it was probably one of the best years in terms of new stuff that I tried. I went paragliding in New Zealand, I entered a new business partnership in a wordpress related area, I visited Hong Kong, I met dozens of new people, I self-published myself, got translated and published in Korean, and a lot, a lot more.

I think curiosity is closely linked to our desire to live. Without curiosity, we barely survive.

What About 2012?

I don’t have any measurable goals for 2012 right now. I don’t even want to tame monkeys anymore. But I’ll keep my curiosity awake and just stay put. If there’s something worth pursuing, I’ll just do it.

Hold on, though. Don’t rush, there’s plenty of time. The reason behind this interview is the launch of the book. Yes, there is a book, and probably one of the most interesting modern self-help books, a unique compilation of Twitter accounts and other interesting bits and pieces of, you got it, simple wisdom for complicated lives. No, you won’t find any tweets by me, and I think this is a good thing, because you may be already bored with what I write here. But you will find plenty of very good stuff, from other fine personal development obsessed freaks like yours truly. So, without any further ado, I will give you now Lori Deschene (look for the end of the interview, though, because there is also a giveaway ).

1. Why Buddha? And why tiny?

Tiny Buddha first started on Twitter, and the stream included just one daily quote—mostly from the Buddha, the Dalai Lama, and other Buddhist thinkers. The name seemed fitting, since it was essentially a tiny piece of daily wisdom. (A friend of mine actually came up with it, so I can’t take full credit!)

Since then, Tiny Buddha has expanded to include a community blog and now my book, but the main idea remains the same: It’s about simple daily wisdom to help us live more mindfully, peacefully, and happily in our everyday lives.

Over time, I’ve found the word “tiny” to be appropriate on many levels. Happiness generally boils down to the tiny choices we make every day. Purpose and success are generally the result of many tiny steps in a direction that feels right to us. And mindfulness is about focusing on the tiny things right in front of us, instead of dwelling on the big things that happened in days past, or we fear may happen in days to come.

2. Tell me 3 things nobody knows about you.

I don’t think there’s anything that nobody knows about me! However, there are some lesser known facts:

I wore a scoliosis back brace for almost three years when I was in elementary school—and I got Joey McIntyre from New Kids on the Block to sign it.

I was in the children’s choir for the Boston run of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat with Donny Osmond. All the other kids were between 8 and 13; I was a 17-year old with pigtails.

I purposely keep a light schedule and regularly turn down opportunities to earn additional money because I enjoy having time to do nothing in specific. People often start emails to me with, “I know you must be really busy…” but I am blissfully not!

3. How was the book writing experience?

It was simultaneously the most challenging and satisfying experience of my life. For years, I told myself I couldn’t write a book because I was better with shorter works, like magazine articles and blog posts. I think this was my way of avoiding doing something that I was scared to do.

Once I jumped in, I realized I could do it—it just required a lot more effort than anything else I’d ever done, especially since I included nearly 200 tweets. That’s how the whole project started: I asked a number of life’s hardest questions on the @tinybuddha Twitter stream, and then shaped the book around the responses.

It was enlightening and inspiring to see how different people answered these questions, which included: What’s the meaning of life? What does it take to be happy? Can people change—and how?

I included many of my own experiences grappling with life’s big issues, and that was both liberating and cathartic. I feel grateful that I was able to share so much of myself and also highlight varied perspectives for peace, purpose, happiness, and connection.

I also created a contest connected to theme of my book. It’s called the “Life’s Hard Questions” contest, and it runs until January 15, 2012. Anyone can enter by submitting a photo of themselves displaying the hardest question in their life at lifeshardquestions.com.
The winners will be chosen at random, though there will be a special prize for the most creative. The prizes include a Canon DSLR camera, two Kindles, and 10 free copies of my book. It’s just another opportunity for people to get involved and share a little of themselves.

4. Why did you want to write a book in the first place?

I originally started the community blog because I’d caused myself a lot of pain in life, and I wanted to create a space where we can all help each overcome adversity, heal, and thrive.

Over the past two years, I’ve published posts from more than 175 contributors; and many of them have revolved around the same ideas—choosing happiness, letting go of the past, living life to the fullest, and creating positive change, for example.

We all deal with the same universal challenges in life, and we all need to make choices based on what feels right and makes sense to us individually. There are very few one-size-fits-all answers. This means we need to learn to trust ourselves, and identify and utilize the answers that we find most empowering.

That’s not always easy to do, especially in an information-overloaded world where there are always new ideas and suggestions coming our way.

I wrote this book because I wanted to acknowledge our shared humanity—all the different things we all go through and deal with—and then explore some ways to thrive right in this moment, both in spite of and because of those challenges.

5. Who’s your best friend?

I don’t know that I have a best friend, but I have a few people who I’m closer to than anyone else. My boyfriend is one of them. He took me skydiving on our second date, and it’s been an amazing adventure for the last two and a half years—both the extraordinary and ordinary moments. I tried to get him to wear a gold half-heart BFF necklace, but so far, no luck!

6. Name 3 places where people could read your book.

In a park, in a coffee shop, in the bathtub. Those are the places where I read! If you mean where people can purchase the book, they can get it on Amazon, in their local book store, or through a number of independent book sellers.

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Now, here’s a nice picture of the book. To get it from Amazon, just click on it (no affiliate links, so there’s nothing for me in this, I’m promoting it just because I really like it).

If you want to have it in your hands, just leave a comment and I will get in touch with you for the details. Lori was kind enough to give 2 copies of the physical books to two lucky readers of my blog. So, hurry up

So every time I’m getting burned by something I do, or something others are doing or saying to me, I’m always questioning who’s blowing the air into that flame. If it’s me, I stop blowing. And every time I stop blowing into my own flame (like ignoring, letting go, accepting and move on) the flame goes away.

But every once in a while, it happens that somebody else is blowing into a fire which is directed to me. Most of the time, they blow from a hidden place. I don’t know why this happens, but it does. And I don’t think I’m the only one experiencing this, I’m sure everybody went through it at least once in their lifetime.

When this happens, when somebody else, from the secrecy of a hidden identity is starting to blow air into some fire against me, I get very, very patient. And wait for the blower to get out of air.

Relationships. Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Shoot Them

This is precisely how I felt about relationships for a long time. It may feel really counterintuitive, given the fact that not only I run a quite popular blog, but I’m also a very visible person, both business-wise, and social-wise. Like I used to say in my early twenties, “the legend is bigger than me”. At that time I started to notice that there was always somebody who seemed to know me from somewhere. I was moderately popular as a radio anchor, knew a lot of people myself, been very visible (and I still am) as business man, and so on.

Knowing a lot of people is one thing, but having and managing healthy relationships is another one. The last one being always very difficult to me. Why? To make a long story short: I like to be alone. I know it took me thirty something years to realize that, but I made peace with it. I’m a lonely beast and I very much enjoy it this way. I find it tedious to relate to people for longer periods of time. While at the same time, to some extent, I do realize that it’s important for me to maintain relationships for longer periods of time. It’s still fuzzy, as I just can’t put my finger on it, can’t say why that is, I just feel that, for some obscure reason, having and keeping longer relationships may be beneficial. Somehow. A bit of this is explained in the last paragraph of this post, but hold on, don’t jump on it yet.

In short, here’s what I accomplished and what I learned while taming my eleventh monkey.

Relationships On The Move

On one side, I am really happy to have myself involved in a new circle of friendships. Many of these new friendships are in the same social circle as I am: either separated or divorced, and with kids. It was kind of a big step for me to reach out to this kind of people. One of the challenges was to find common pastimes. As a man, on the rare occasions I was going out, it was either running, going to the movies, some business event or the regular Saturday night drinks with the guys. So, I had to search, find and implement a few new pastimes.

One of them is the Saturday pancakes, as I like to call it. The neat thing about keep doing pancakes is that, in time, you become really good at making pancakes. So, I started a series of weekend pancake parties, which of course involved kids and their parents. Huge success. Another pastime was to go to the kids theater. That is on Sundays. Kids are going to see a different play each and every Sunday, while parents are catching their breath with a hot cup of tea or coffee. Of course, there are variations, sometime we go to a specific event or to a kids movie, or whatever.

On another side, I was getting rid of a different type of relationships, which I used to call “empty nutshells”. These are relationships with no core. It may have been that at the time of inception they were necessary, but now the core is consumed. So, I was slowly letting slide into the past a few empty nutshells. It is important to say that I let them slowly. It wasn’t something forced or imposed.

And yet another thing I’ve been massively doing during November: attending to business events. I’ve been called to at least 3, I guess, and at one of them I even wore a suit. I’m serious. I wore a suit and it’s been in the papers and all . At these events I did my best to mingle, interact and start new contacts. I remember I spent like 15 minutes waiting to talk to Doug Richard, which is something really unusual for me. Again, all this mingle and interacting was done without forcing anything. It was actually fun.

The last, and perhaps most important thing I did during November was to start a new business partnership. It’s about the newly revamped WPSumo, in which I am, for the first time, partner with an angel investor. It is by far the most drastic change I did in my business approaches, and one that is still undergoing a lot of changes. But it’s also something that I felt compelled to. Technically, the business partnership started in October, but I counted it for November.

A Surprising Side Effect

Well, I don’t know if it was because I announced this monkey on the blog, or because the Law Of Attraction really works, but something very interesting happened during this month. People started to call me. Like sending me emails, messages on Facebook or Google. Out of nothing, they wrote to me proposing to meet, to start projects, to get counseling (one of them was breaking up with her boyfriend and needed some astrological advice). It was a huge surprise. People are actually reaching out and trying to get in contact with me. I honestly didn’t expect that. But again, it’s fun.

What I Learned From This Monkey

We’re cells. We’re interconnected in a bigger picture. Like we’re really interconnected, it’s not just a word or an empty concept. We function differently when we’re in autonomous mode versus when we’re in interconnection mode. There is a bigger and different flow of energy going on when we’re in interconnection mode. I’m not talking about the quality of it, because energy may be either creative or destructive, I’m just witnessing the fact that human interaction is creating much more energy. Which is bigger than the algebraicl sum of 1 + 1. When in bad relationships, this energy is destructive, of course.

On the other side, it’s not at all impossible to live an isolated life. I’m a living proof of that, by the way.

But an isolated life will eventually lead to some form of energy depletion. Like a cell which is claiming independence from the main body. It may get it at some point, no doubt about it. But it may get it in a very brutal way, like a nail which is being cut. You got your independence, but you’re also expendable.

If you’re not providing to the body somehow, you eventually become unnecessary.

But the good news is that, as humans, we may still choose the way in which we provide back. We’re not so specialized, like a liver cell or heart tissue cell, doing only one thing. We can change our ways as we see fit.

The secret is to find that specific place where your skills, approaches and all the other unspoken gifts you have to give to the world are needed.

And then start giving.