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Digging a Little Deeper to Develop Your Emotional Intelligence

2008-11-18T03:54:38Z

Over the summer I was listening to a book on CD about Frank Sinatra during my daily commute. He used to stand outside nightclubs begging the owners for a chance to sing for free, pushing his talents on to anyone willing to listen to his story. This was a recurrent theme throughout his early career. He would get a break then blow it because he let his temper get the best of him. He was forced to recreate himself until he discovered his emotional stability. Yes, he always had a temper, but he used that anger to spur his actions. His actions as one of the greatest singers of his era and his fearlessness when fighting for racial equality speak volumes of his ability to harness his emotions.

J.D. over at Get Rich Slowly forced me to take a hard look at my own writing. He turned down my last submission to GRS because he felt that it didn’t offer enough value. He was right. The article was about spending less and saving more, so you don’t have to work from paycheck to paycheck, but all of his readers already know this. J.D. pointed this out and gave me another chance to write a better article. Incidentally this post was also going to be a guest post too. J.D. felt it was good, but had too much of a personal development angle for his finance blog. So instead of giving it to someone else I’ve decided that I wanted to post it right here.

Your Success

Your emotional intelligence is probably the most important factor to your success. We try so hard to be productive, save money and exercise, but we neglect the most important part to our happiness - our Emotional Quotient (EQ).

What happens to you when your emotions bubble up? Do you acknowledge, release and move on, or do you let your emotions affect future choices? When you can learn to use your emotions to spur change you can better yourself. We all get upset at work. Maybe you aren’t treated with respect or the work doesn’t excite you. Regardless of what causes you trouble, it is important that you must find a system to improve your EQ.

Step 1 - Become Aware of Your Recurring Emotions and Why They Arise

When J.D. asked me to write another article my emotions took over. At first I felt sadness. My shoulders slumped and my head followed. Then I began to feel upset as I clasped my hands and squeezed as hard as I could.

I was in the RSS Idol Competition over at Daily Blog Tips during the month of July and I was hoping that the guest post would help me reach a new audience. My plan had fallen apart and that meant that I was probably out of the $3,000 competition.

I knew why my emotions occurred and how they arose, but working with them to help spur change is always the most difficult part.

Step 2 - Work with Your Emotions

J.D. gave me a much needed kick in the butt. To become a top flight writer you need to go deeper than everyone else. A few years ago I might have thrown in the towel and told myself I didn’t need to bother. My blog was growing just fine. The old me would have used an excuse like this to cop out, letting the fear dictate my choices. Fear was just an emotional obstacle that I needed to overcome if I want to take my writing to a new level. I had to go deeper to give all of you something that would bounce around your mind for hours or even days. The problem was my lack of inspiration.

I went to the library to check out what other authors were writing about. I browsed the books, picking one up here and there and that’s when I realized that I was developing my emotional muscles. I had calmed myself and rose to action to improve the situation. If I let my emotions run wild I might have allowed my frustration take over and given up. Instead I was using these emotions to create a new direction that led to this article.

Step 3 - Practice Your Emotional Development

Just like curbing the Starbucks habit and brown bagging your lunch for work takes commitment, so does working with your emotions. At first it’s painful. Almost every good habit that I have now was painful at first, until I practiced it over and over and it became a welcomed friend. Remember your first job and how traumatic it all was? It was exciting, but a lot of mental work, dealing with co-workers, finding your niche, and getting the work done well. Over time it became routine and easy, preparing you for your next job.

When that first uncomfortable emotion occurs, whether it’s your commuter rage or low self-esteem, it’s malleable if you take the time to work with it. Next time you let your anger get a hold of you, notice where it comes from and what situations cause it to arise and next time you are in a similar situation be aware and open to these feelings. Allow them to sink in and find a way to allocate this energy to improve your circumstances. The quicker you can rebound from upsetting feelings the quicker you can get back to being productive.

Step 4 - Celebrate Even the Smallest Wins

I actually gave a Tiger fist pump, the same one he used at the U.S. Open, in the middle of the library because I realized my development was happening in that moment. My fist just jumped out and I went with it. The middle aged woman next to me stepped back. I whispered my apology and walked away. It didn’t bother me that I looked like some crazy guy because I was using my emotions to encourage positive change.

I was enjoying the process of bringing valuable content to the internet. Something that could really help other people work happier.

Your EQ is the most important aspect to your success. It helps you create solid relationships with co-workers. Over 60% of all new hires are based on referrals. If you are a balanced, warm and thoughtful person, you’ll have no trouble staying employed. There are plenty of brilliant people who are unemployed because they don’t understand how to develop their emotional skills. Don’t fall into the trap of tackling the same problems with the same emotional habits. Use your feelings to spur change and you’ll uncover new depths of strength that you never thought possible.

Articles Related to Emotional Intelligence:

Image courtesy of Mr. Theklan

Fire Fly Manifesto and Career Renegade Go Live

2008-11-20T11:47:09Z

It’s been years in the making, and today’s the day…

CareerRenegade.com is officially live today, along with the release of my Fire Fly Manifesto.

So, what’s this all about?

It’s no surprise I’ve been working on Career Renegade “the book” for the last two years. But this book was always intended to be something bigger, much bigger…the catalyst for a movement defined by:

“The quest to build your career around the life you want to live, the people you love to be around and the things you love to do, while living well in the world.”

So, the book is coming out on January 13th (woohoo!) and it’s now available for pre-order on amazon.com, your local bookstore or any other online outlet (man I’ve been waiting to say that for a really long time). FYI - you may want to pre-order, because it’s not a huge first run and, with the early interest and what you’ll see I’m offering when you pre-order over at CareerRenegade.com, I’m a bit concerned it’s going to sell out before it’s even released.

Granted, January 13th is only a few weeks away, but I wanted to give you something to read and do NOW, and that’s where CareerRenegade.com and The Fire Fly Manifesto come in.

The Fire Fly Manifesto

I began writing this before the economic crisis really took hold and quickly realized the need to finish and release it immediately. It’s short at only 10 pages and it speaks to an opportunity, maybe a once in a lifetime opportunity, that’s being laid at our feet during what’s no doubt an incredibly trying time for many people.

It gives both hope…and something to do.

It gives you a way to refocus your energy on coming out of the financial funk not only on sound footing, but with a new professional path defined not by the blind quest for false security and the illusion of success, but by equal helpings of passion and prosperity. And, it’s totally free, in fact, you don’t even need to give your e-mail to download it.

So, go here now, download your copy, it’ll only take a few minutes to read, then, if it resonates with you (and I hope it will)…

Help me spread the word…

Share it, post it, e-mail it (actually, the file’s a little big, so better to just e-mail a link), tweet it, Facebook it, Stumble it, buzz it, print it, bind it, pass it around…whatever form of word of mouth works for you. I just want the ideas in the manifesto to get out there now. Even if you disagree with them, at least use them to begin a conversation many people aren’t yet having.

But wait, there’s more…

While you’re over at CareerRenegade.com, check out the other cool things you can dive into. Here’s an excerpt from my opening post over there, revealing some of the adventures and posts to come…

Weekly Career Renegade Profiles - As you peruse through the different pages, you’ll discover a totally free weekly Career Renegade Profiles series you can sign up for. These are amazing, one-hour, in-depth conversations with people who’ve accomplished what so many of us seek to accomplish. True Career Renegades. And, they are offered as a combination of teleseminars, recorded interviews and some really killer video webisodes. Every week will be a little different. So, be sure to click on over to the Renegade Profiles page and sign up.

Online Career Renegade Flight School - I’ll also be introducing a number of different ways to participate in the community, through live events, online events and trainings, like my first ever 16-hour (wowzers) Online Career Renegade Flight School, and what I’d love to grow into a community of localized Career Renegade chapters, where like-minded folks can connect, brainstorm, strategize and support each other.

The Case For Coming Alive - Now, in the manifesto, you’ll learn about a ridiculously compelling 30-page report I’ve been working on (for nearly two years, seriously) called The Case For Coming Alive. It’s literally set up like a legal brief, packed with research and case-studies and it’s designed to convince both you and those whose support you desperately seek that working without passion and purpose, regardless how much you earn, is a long slow death sentence that must be reversed.

It’s not about hyperboly, scare tactics or puffery, it’s wall-to-wall facts. And, listening to the responses of the few people who’ve seen working drafts, it’s powerful enough to rally just about anyone to your cause. and, It’ll probably be released as a multi-part series on the blog over the first month or two.

So, that’s it, really, when you get a chance today, head on over to our newest adventure–CareerRenegade.com.

Spend a few minutes checking out all the fun new pieces of this just burgeoning community…

Download the manifesto, say hello in the comments on the first post and, if you’re inspired, sign up for all the cool free stuff.

And, as always, a big, fat, giant virtual hug of gratitude to you for supporting me, this wonderful community and joining in the conversation. It’s been an amazing journey that’s about to expand dramatically and I’m so excited to see how we can continue to inspire, encourage, learn from and lead each other!

Let the Career Renegade revolution begin!

TEDTalks : Why a free press is the best investment - Sasa Vucinic (2005)

2006-10-18T05:11:00Z

A free press -- papers, magazines, radio, TV, blogs -- is the backbone of any true democracy (and a vital watchdog on business). Sasa Vucinic, a journalist from Belgrade, talks about his new fund, which supports media by selling "free press bonds."

Can You Just Enjoy a Moment?

2008-11-19T11:42:18Z

Someday Lesson: While analysis has its place, there are times when spontaneity rocks.

My first exposure to Spain (and Spanish men) happened over New Year’s 2006/2007. My friend Cate came to visit me and we did Paris for Christmas and Barcelona for New Year’s. That was when I fell in love with Spain.

I also learned something important during that trip. It allowed me, after my first date with Raul, to offer to go to Madrid with him for EuroPride, even though we’d just met. I didn’t analyze; I just acted. And I learned it here: Whirlwind Barcelona Boyfriends.

Once the Lab-Rats had read that post, I asked them to answer the following:

Can you enjoy a moment for itself or does your enjoyment come from analyzing it from every angle?
How do you approach decisions normally? Do you decide and do in a flash or do you plan, weigh possible outcomes then act only when you’re sure of the outcome?
Give me an example of when you’ve acted contrary to your nature – did it turn out well or was it a disaster?

You’ll notice the similarity in questions 2 & 3 to questions I posed to the Lab Rats earlier (here and here). Take a look at the answers now and then – did the change in perspective change the answers or did the Lab Rats stay consistent?

BTW, the Urbane Lion is sick, so is off the hook this week. I’m sure everyone joins me in wishing him well.

Enjoying the Moment

Sal mixes his analysis with being in moment. Nothing is analyzed as it happens; it just is. Later he’ll think about the experience and either savour it (good ones) or learn from them (bad ones).

Brett (not surprisingly) is a total in-the-moment guy. I’ll use his words to share his favourite “just is” moment:

When we took the ferry from Auckland to Waiheke in August 2007, it was raining lightly, but it was warm. I stood up at the front of the ferry boat, on the top deck - outside. Just because I wanted to feel the spray and take it all in. I think a lot of folks thought I was nuts, my wife included. But I didn’t care, as that memory will stay with me forever - and you know, I’ll do it again, when I return.

Crista is more like me (as if we didn’t know that already) and in emotional situations she will overanalyze. Being aware of this tendency, however, she usually ends up choosing the opposite of the result her analysis has rationalized.

Plan or Do?

In business settings Crista uses her analytical skills to her advantage because she will think of things that others don’t see and it has prevented some bad decisions, but it’s been a learned skill for her. She’s jumped too quickly in the past and has landed in an empty pool before. On the positive side, this jumping-tendency makes Crista adventurous and she’s able to walk blind into a situation and make the most of it.

Sal is learning to plan less. He can now enjoy spontaneity and almost looks forward to it. The hardest part is letting himself go and not worry. Fortunately he can at least hold his wife’s hand while walking blind to keep himself from freaking out completely.

In this case, I’m with Brett who uses the phrase for a former professor: “optimum sloppiness”. Think about the problem, the choices, what needs to be done, potential outcomes, and then do it. For small things it’s usually a flash decision, for larger things, more thought. I’ve always called it being “efficiently lazy” which was a term a former math teacher used all the time, but it amounts to the same thing: figuring out the minimum effort for the maximum gain.

Pushing the Limits

Crista used this lesson to do something impulsive this week. She was driving home from somewhere and considered seeing her grandmother who’d been sick. It meant a 40 minute drive out of her way, and she started analyzing the pros and cons, but then she thought of this lesson, and went. She had a great time and really appreciated spending a few hours with her grandmother.

Sal had been feeling wary about marrying his wife, due to a recent divorce and was totally over-analyzing everything about the relationship. He then realized that such a decision had nothing to do with pros and cons. It was all about the heart. He loved his now-wife and knew there was no reason not to marry her. So he went out and bought the ring and on December 23rd, they’ll be celebrating their 3rd anniversary. Likewise Brett went against his nature by going to a party in 1996 where he knew almost no one and ended up meeting his wife.

Post from: Someday Syndrome

Thank You, the Most Inadequate Words

2008-11-17T19:51:22Z

“Okay, so where do we start?”

“Well, let’s get the poker tables set up and then we’ll fit the silent auction tables around the perimeter of the room. Then we’ll leave that area over there for people to sit and socialize.”

The sound of tables being shoved into place and the clang of metal chairs rang out in the banquet hall and a group of about ten of us worked to set up the benefit The Social Director and I threw for The Ice Queen to try to help her raise money for her recovery from brain surgery. She has a tumor that will be removed (hopefully in its entirety) on Wednesday, just two days from now.

What started out as a desire by her to play one more poker tournament, germinated, planting the seeds of a fundraiser in our minds. We wanted to help; neither of us are brain surgeons so we scrapped the idea of cutting out her tumor ourselves. Neither of us are multi-millionaires, so paying her hospital bills was out, too. In fact, we usually have more month left than money so we could really help very little in that regard, and because they’re carrying two mortgages for the house they live in plus the house they’re rehabbing, they really could use the money, especially since the Ice Queen will not be working for at least three months, which means no income for her because she is self-employed.

Ding! Fundraiser!

Two weeks of furious soliciting from local businesses as well as fielding calls from family and friends who wanted to pitch in began and we found ourselves on Friday night setting up the biggest party The Social Director and I have ever thrown.

I should have known how big this was going to be when we ran out of table space for the auction items, then again when we ran out of bid sheets to put next to the auction items and I had printed 80 copies, and then one more time when we ran out of pens to use on each bid sheet. We had to hand write descriptions for items donated at the last minute. We fretted over the amount of beer, wondering if sixteen 30 packs would be enough. And then, we turned off the lights, shut the doors, and left, hoping the next evening would bring people out of the woodwork.

++++++++++

Six Weeks Earlier…

“Can I get everyone’s attention? I know I asked you to stick around and I would like to tell you something. Come sit by me.” The Social Director’s and Ice Queen’s mom (The Fairy Grandmother) patted the seats around her at a wedding shower. It had been debated long and hard about the best way to do this, and The Ice Queen said she couldn’t face it. She couldn’t get the words out of her mouth, and her mom, her rock and best friend and go-to person, said she’d do it for her. But she couldn’t do it over and over, so the wedding shower was decided upon as the place to do it, to tell as much family at one time and let them spread the word to those that weren’t there, but only after the shower was over so as not to take away from the focus on the bride. We tried to make it fair, but what’s fair about a brain tumor?

So she sat, The Fairy Grandmother, with a tissue in her hand and tears streaming down her face and she told them, the women in the family, that it was serious, that it was scary, and that it would have to be removed. The Ice Queen has a brain tumor, and has to have brain surgery. The Ice Queen herself stood in the vestibule of the senior center where the shower was held, talking quietly to another best friend and cousin, the girl with whom she’d grown up and pinky sworn the secrets little girls pinky swear about. She cried with her friend while her mother cried with the rest of the family. There was encouragement, resolve, heartfelt sympathy and not a small dosage of fear. The Ice Queen is only thirty six! How could this be? How can God let a mother of two young boys get a brain tumor?

The family left the shower stunned, red faced, and determined to help in such a helpless situation. But the Ice Queen didn’t ask for help. She didn’t say there were things she couldn’t do. She didn’t call anyone up except her mother to commiserate her fate. She went to the doctor, stoic and determined, listening to the plan of attack and preparing for her own fight. And the family around her, still determined to help, floundered.

++++++++++

Halloween, there was a glimmer of hope. An evite, inviting everyone to a benefit in the Ice Queen’s honor. A way to help, to pitch in and do something, anything to fight the situation the Ice Queen is facing. Within two hours of the evite hitting email inboxes, there were already fifteen RSVPs. A couple people asked if they could donate items, if a silent auction had been considered besides the game of poker the Ice Queen wanted to play one last time before her surgery. What started out as an idea to get a little extra money to the Ice Queen to help with bills while she was recovering blew up and grew larger and larger as the day went on. A cousin and friend called and asked me if she could help me keep the auction stuff straight, get businesses involved and drum up donations. I was grateful for the help because I had no idea what I was doing. I wrote up a business flyer to explain the situation and send to local businesses and see if they could help, and boy did they. We had karate lessons, bowling passes, more rounds of golf than we could swing a putter at, baskets for movie nights, pampering lotions baskets, makeup baskets, book baskets, decorative baskets, scrapbooking baskets, tickets, baseball cards, services for photo shoots (and not just from me) and for landscaping and for carpet cleaning and for maid services… And money. Money from businesses, money from friends, money from relatives who couldn’t attend. I had to shut off my emotional triggers to just gather and organize it all because if I let myself think too long on the generosity of our community, I would lose it. I did lose it a few times when the pride in my town and its people got to be too much to stifle. I just made sure to lose it out of sight of the Ice Queen. Her emotional beakers were full before we were more than a couple days into the planning. And so we planned mostly out of her range of awareness, and yet we planned loudly and furiously. Tanning packages and dinners for two and beer and soda and chips and rules for the poker game, invite lists, and did you talk to that family that lives across the river to see if they can make it?

Most of all, we hoped and we channeled our hope for her prognosis into hope for attendance, for generous donations, for high bidders, and also for a kick ass party to show the Ice Queen that we’ve got her back.

++++++++++

I deftly explained to people as they arrived that if they chose to play cards, it was an additional amount, and I needed them to pick their table number, sign their name and address, hand over the rules and their baggie of chips, and the auction was open, bar was around the corner, and food was downstairs. Thank you for coming. There were many familiar faces, people who I hugged and there were many faces I didn’t know, faces of friends of friends who were there to help out. For a lot of the family members, it was like a reunion, both high school and family all rolled into one. The line to get in the door was several people deep more than once, and not because we were taking a long time to get people in. There were also those who brought donations with them, things we weren’t aware of that had to be written up and placed on the auction tables with a bid sheet. The din of conversation drowned out some of my explanations. Some people just smiled and came in, looking for friends. My mother-in-law, the Fairy Grandmother, hid in the kitchen around the food, overwhelmed by the outpouring that came to support her daughter. We had to go physically pull her by the hand and into the crowd to get her to mingle, and several times, I saw her pass by with tears on her face and a crumpled up tissue in her hand. But there was a smile on her face, beside those glistening tears. There was gratitude in her eyes. But only a fraction of what was on the face of the Ice Queen. When the cards began, there were still close to a hundred other people milling about, betting on auction items, throwing money in a tip bucket up at the bar to be donated to the Ice Queen, sitting at tables catching up with people they hadn’t seen in ages. Some came to the front table to hand me cards with notes of encouragement in them, and a little something special for the guest of honor. One had a bunch of McDonald’s gift cards in it for her boys. One had a restaurant gift card. One gave us all goosebumps when eight one hundred dollar bills slipped out and into the Ice Queen’s hand from a childhood friend of her mother’s, practically family, who had silently showed their devotion with the most generous donation of the night, and we were all speechless.

People danced between the tables selling 50/50 tickets for a cash drawing, raffle tickets for a donated wheelbarrow of booze, or handing out drinks from the bar to the poker players who couldn’t get up to get their own. People sidled past one another through the auction tables, writing down their names and bids, and then walking through to check and see if they’d been outbid. The night wore on. Prizes were awarded for the drawings and then the winner would promptly hand the money back, donating it back to the Ice Queen. We did a live auction for football tickets, hockey tickets, an Albert Pujols sketch, a Coach purse. The silent auction ended and people swarmed the front table to pay for their items. The poker wound down and every winner but one donated the money all back. I sat with my calculator, counting, double checking, figuring, and with each addition, I grew more overwhelmed and humbled.

++++++++++

“Can I have your attention please?” The roar reduced to a buzz, then a murmur. “First, I would like to thank each and every one of you for your generosity, your donations, your attendance, and mostly for your well-wishes and your prayers. We have some incredible family and friends, without many of whom this night would not have been possible. Because of your awesomeness, your willingness to open your wallets and your checkbooks, and you’re desire to help out someone who has spent most of her adult life helping each of us in some manner or another, we have gathered more than… EIGHT THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS to donate to our guest of honor to help while she faces this ordeal!” The crowd cheered, drowning out my choked up voice. When the roar subsided, I spoke again. “This is just the send-off for Phillip we were hoping for.” Some in the group tittered, others looked confused. “Oh, for those who don’t know, [the Ice Queen’s husband] nicknamed the tumor Phillip, so this is Phillip’s going away party. Get out of here, Phillip,” I said, miming kicking someone’s butt out the door. The good humor of the night was infectious, from the friend getting the Ice Queen a hooded sweatshirt that said, “I went in for brain surgery and all I got was this stupid haircut,” to Phillip to the joyous carousing near the bar and the hugs. You’d think we were celebrating, which in a way, we were. We were celebrating life, family, relationships with people about whom we care, and love. It was unlike anything I’ve ever been witness to, not only on scale, but on depth as well.

When I put down the microphone after my announcement and went to talk to the Ice Queen, she was unable to speak, shocked by the staggering figure I’d just announced. By the end of the night, the figure crept higher, realizing she’d had a couple direct donations sitting at her house, and I remembered a few more in my purse and another bunch waiting to hit my checking account from PayPal that I’m passing on to her. We’re already at just over $9,000.

Nine. Thousand. Dollars.

If there were words that could convey more heartfelt sincerity and depth beyond measure than “thank you,” I would have said them that night. The best I can do besides thank you is not to forget, to remember this gift to my sister-in-law that was gathered when we rang the rally bell, and to pay it forward again and again and again.

Posted in Peeps, Surreal

Tides

2008-08-20T23:58:00Z

One of my favorite things about watching Archer grow up is seeing him make friends. Real friends. The kind of friends he will have always, even if time and place and circumstances separate them. The kind of friends he will grow nostalgic for when he thinks of his childhood...

I think back to my first friends and am amazed at how much I remember of them: the red ribbons Christina would wear in her hair. The My Little Pony stickers on Danielle's vanity. The mock-neck sweater (red and blue) Christopher was wearing when he kissed me under the slide.

I love watching Archer make memories -- his shadow flexing and turning and overlapping the silhouettes of best friends, his very first. Cherished always. Racing into the tide and beyond.

GGC

Lifestyle Design and Your Ideal World

2008-11-10T13:53:47Z

Image by JessieFish

Warning: this will be a long post!

There are no funny pictures of cats, comic strips, or post-election opinions in this one. It’s just good information that can help change your life if you let it.

In the manifesto that has now been downloaded more than 100,000 times, I wrote about how many people have no idea what they want to get out of life. The answer to the question, “What do you really want?” tends to trip a lot of us up.

In this post I’ll help you get closer to your own answer to that question, using three different perspectives. If you’ve never done much in the way of lifestyle design before, the end of the year is a good time to start thinking about it. Monday is also a good day to start the week off well, so while we’re looking at long-term well-being, try to find at least one or two ideas here that will help you this week.

Perspective #1: Creating Your Perfect Day

In this classic exercise, you write out your idealized, perfect day in great detail, beginning from what time you get up and what you have for breakfast all the way through what you do for each hour of the day and who you talk to. The more detail you can add to the plan, the better.

Then you begin to make plans to adjust your life to get closer to the perfect day you’ve designed for yourself. If you take this exercise seriously, you may begin making more conscious decisions about how you spend your time and what you focus on. Even if you don’t make a lot of changes, you’ll learn a lot about yourself based on the information you acquire. I do this exercise once a year in December and always end up making a lot of improvements the next year.

There are a number of variations on this exercise, but one I’ve used before is from Paul Myers. You can get a free copy of his take on it here.

Perspective #2: Radical Goal-Setting

As I said, the Perfect Day exercise is a classic of the lifestyle design literature, and it can help you a lot if you’ve never thought much about what you really enjoy doing. There are two major weaknesses of this exercise, however, and if you don’t compensate for each of them, you can make significant improvements in your life… but you’ll still find yourself wondering, “Is that all there is?”

The first weakness is that in the end, it’s not all about you.

You have to do more than create the perfect day for yourself, because most people really don’t want to spend every day in a castle with someone bringing their perfectly-buttered toast to them in the mornings; they want to do something meaningful with their talents. They want to make the world a better place. They want to find a way to help that is unique to their own abilities. Without addressing this concern, I believe, most of us will not be able to live life to the fullest.

The second weakness has to do with the goals themselves. Where are they?

The Perfect Day exercise, for the most part, doesn’t touch on goals at all. You define what kind of work you do, who you interact with, and so on, but goals are not included. Therefore, you have to add goal-setting to the plan somehow. I tend to think if something is worth doing, you might as well do it all the way – so thus I’ve added “Radical Goal-Setting” to my own unconventional life planning. I usually break it out like this:

1 Year Goals (this list gets reviewed a few times a year, and I create next year’s goals each December)

5 Year Goals (this list gets reviewed once a year)

Lifetime Goals (this list gets reviewed once a year, and make sure to include some really big ideas for your lifetime goals)

I divide each list into these categories: Health, Friends, Family, Writing, Business, Travel, Income, Savings, Giving, Service, Spiritual, and Personal.

(When you do this for yourself, you should probably have many of the generic categories, and at least 1-2 categories specific to your own situation.)

Perspective #3: Planning for Serendipity

I frequently schedule multiple, major projects at the same time, and I am seemingly the only defender of multitasking left out there in the blogosphere. (Hellooooo… it’s lonely in here.)

For me, if I don’t have a lot of plates in the air, I get bored. We’ll look at how that works some other time, but the point I want to make now is that a lot of people express amazement that I can do “so much.” Well, I don’t speak for all the organized people in the world, but I’m going to let you in on a secret that pertains to many of us: we’re not as super-disciplined as you think. Really.

What many of us have done instead is create a structure around our work that allows us to improvise. We do take goal-setting seriously and do work very hard, but any discipline that comes about is usually a result of building a good structure to begin with.

Some of my most fulfilling experiences have been on days when I haven’t had a lot planned. I’ve taken off for long runs in dozens of world cities without a map or any knowledge of the local language. I’ve watched the sunset without an agenda in Zambia and the Faroe Islands. Almost every time I experience something like this, I always think to myself, “Wow. Life is good. I am so thankful to be alive.”

Nor do the experiences have to be exotic to be serendipitous. I also enjoy sleeping in a couple of times a week, going out for coffee almost every day I’m at home, playing video games, and deciding on a whim to do something completely different one day.

Another way to think of it is this: in the long-run, I want to be focused on the goals, my ideal world, and helping people however I can. In the short-run, I have to take steps to ensure those things are happening, but it’s not a highly regulated environment. If anything, it’s a flexible-but-purposeful environment. You don’t have to give up serendipity at all. Instead, when you work towards building your Ideal World, you’ll usually end up with more time to be spontaneous, and more energy for the “fun” things you like to do.

Comparison

This mind-map illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of each approach – click to enlarge or download. In case you were wondering, I use MindJet software (free trial here) to do this kind of outlining.

Financing Your Life

Commentaries on lifestyle design usually fall into one of two camps – those that pretend that money doesn’t matter, and those that act like money is everything. Naturally, both of these positions are problematic.

Of course money is important; how else can you pursue the life of your dreams if you have no income or savings? It’s hard to buy groceries on dreams alone. I am a renegade entrepreneur who believes in creating my own freedom through self-employment and personal responsibility. This requires hard work — it does not usually just fall into place somewhere.

But yes, it is also true that money is not usually the biggest obstacle that holds people back from greatness. As I said way back when I started this site, whenever I head out for a big trip, I always end up talking with someone who “wishes” they could do the same but feels unable. More often than not, if they really wanted to travel around the world (or pursue their own goals, whatever they are), they could probably do so. What holds us back, more often than money, is fear of the unknown and priorities that we have placed elsewhere. In other words, the passive decision to join the world of the unremarkably average.

Where is the balance between ignoring the reality that we need money and stressing over it to the point of obsession? I think it lies in a) clearly understanding how much money we need to do what we want (as precisely as possible), and then b) making a plan to get that amount of money.

Begin Where You Are

Last and most importantly, never underestimate the power of small choices. I get emails once in a while from people who say they are too in debt to do what they want, too young, too old, or otherwise unable to create their ideal lives. I always say, start small. Do something different this week that will get you a little bit closer.

Have you ever known someone who transformed a completely sedentary lifestyle into a completely active one? One year the guy is an overweight smoker who drinks and eats too much. The next year he undergoes a remarkable transformation where he quits smoking, radically improves his diet, and becomes a fitness freak.

We see people like that and think, “Amazing!” On a personal level, it is amazing. But the most amazing parts are the first steps. Somewhere along the way, momentum kicks in and never stops. Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho has a theory about why this is the case:

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

You can take that or leave it as you see fit. All I will say is that momentum is real. It carries marathon runners from Mile 24 to Mile 26.2. It can help you get whatever you want, but first you need to be very clear on what exactly that thing is.

Coming in December

Each December I spend the better part of a week thinking about this process, completing a number of other life planning exercises, and setting my goals for the next year. This time, I’ll share most (if not all) of the process with you. I had thought about turning this into one of my paid products, but I decided I would rather open it up to as many people as possible.

I’m also going to offer some limited personal consulting (details on Wednesday) to help a few people with specific solutions, but that will not affect the regular site content on world domination, international travel, self-employment, etc.

If you get started thinking through the exercises and ideas above, you’ll be ahead of the curve when we get into more details next month. Good luck!

As usual, feel free to post your own ideas or feedback in the comments.

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Unconventional Guides:

Working for Yourself: Creating Personal Freedom
Discount Airfare: Surviving Stress and Maximizing Fun

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Fans buy soccer team

2008-11-10T21:58:12Z

After a team sale was organized over the web, about 31,000 people have an ownership stake in a UK soccer team called Ebbsfleet United.

MyFootballClub has about 31,000 members/owners from all over the world (including the author of this article), all of whom pay an annual subscription of about $60 to be a member of the nonprofit trust that owns "the Fleet." The club is run on the principle of one person, one vote for every decision, major or minor. Ebbsfleet recently made headlines in the British press when members voted to sell John Akinde, a talented young striker, for about $250,000, the first vote of its kind.

(link)

I’m not even sure why we have katanas anymore

2008-11-10T16:10:30Z

So the other day I was wearing the only clean thing in my house, which was a beach sarong that’s basically two giant scarves tied around my neck, and it’s super-comfy but at the slightest breeze it flies open to reveal my nipples to the world. This is called foreshadowing.

So I ran some errands and when I parked in front of my house I saw Quiet Asian Guy in his yard and considering how often he’s seen me naked I was mindful to arrange my scarves and exit the car all lady-like and I was feeling very smug about not showing my junk to the neighbor when I tripped on something and practically broke my ankle but I still kept hold of my scarves with a death-grip because I have determination but then I turned back to see what I’d tripped on and it was A GIGANTIC FUCKING SNAKE and this is where I totally lose. my. shit and run into the house with my scarves flying wildly behind me, and I’m screaming at Victor to get a gun and I run to grab a sword and then Victor gets all yelly that I’m overreacting just because I wanted to use a katana to slice up a snake in the street. Because he loves snakes and wants me to die. Apparently.

So we go back outside and the snake is still there but his head is sqwooshed so Victor thinks I probably ran over him with my car when I was leaving which means it was UNDER MY CAR WHEN I GOT IN, like in those emails where the gang member is hiding under your car and he slices your achilles tendon for his gang initiation, except this is even worse because instead of a gang member it’s a snake who doesn’t have a knife so he’s going to have to chew your achilles tendon in half. Yeah. So now you get why I was so freaked out. So then I realized that no one would believe this so I took a picture of the snake but I couldn’t capture how HUGE it was and I needed something for scale so I grabbed some coins to throw at the snake but I didn’t want to get too close because it could be faking death to lull me into a false sense of security. So I’m tossing nickels at it but they’re all bouncing off and rolling away and that’s when I realized that I’m standing in the street throwing change at a dead snake like it’s some sort of performing monkey with an accordion. So I tried a few more coins before I remembered how bad I was at “quarters” in college and then Victor noticed I’d swiped his change bucket and started yelling at me that I’d better be picking that shit back up and of course that was not going to happen so I just kicked the change into the storm drain and walked closer to take a semi-closeup of the dead animal I ran over for you, gentle reader, because I’m a blogger who cares. Would Guy Kawasaki do that for you? (Answer: Probably not because I’m pretty sure they don’t have snakes in California.) And I thought about putting a little tip jar beside the dead snake just to fuck with whoever found him next but I didn’t want to get that close and also I didn’t have a tip jar.

I added the bear and the lightening bolts because the picture didn’t capture just how fucked-up the whole thing was. And that’s why now when I get into my car I have to circle it first, looking underneath it for snakes and then when I get in I leap into it from several feet away just in case a snake is hiding in the wheel-well, except that when I did it this morning I misjudged the height because when I jumped in I totally slammed my forehead into the roof of the car and I panicked because I could feel myself about to fall backward onto the asphalt and all I could think about was how much it would suck to get bit in the eye by the wheel-well snake and so I desperately grabbed the steering wheel and caught it although I did break two nails which sucks but is better than being bit in the eye by a snake.

And also I lost my checkbook. That’s not related to the snake thing but it sucks too.

Comment of the day: See, that’s one of those Driveway Vipers. The squished head with the tire tracks is just camouflage. Its hunting method is adapted for a suburban environment. First, it sneaks into your driveway and plays dead under your car, being careful to avoid the tires. You dispose of the “dead” snake but you’re so freaked out that you start doing stuff like leaping into your car and smacking your head on the door frame. Next thing you know, you’re lying in your driveway with a concussion, at which point the snake returns to chew your Achilles tendons at its leisure. You got off lucky. Your best defense at this point is to start wearing a helmet when leaping into your car. We’re doomed, people. The snakes are out-evolving us. It’s only a matter of time before one starts camouflaging itself as a katana and then you’d be standing in your driveway trying to kill the squished head snake with the katana snake while the Sunday paper snake sneaks up behind you. ~ Steve

November 4, 2008

2008-11-04T14:49:25Z

Hi-res version

So Long, Farewell

2008-11-03T06:42:00Z

I'm officially tired. The final preparations have whupped my butt, I've been cleaning for the last three hours, my back hurts and I'm certain I've forgotten to pack several vital items, but we're ready. As ready as we'll ever be. We leave the house at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow for our grand adventure.

I have that familiar mixture of excitement and fear in my stomach that I remember so well from my world traveling days. I know I won't sleep tonight. I'll remember some small item, lying in bed at 3:00 a.m., and rise to tuck it into a pocket that's not quite stuffed full yet and that will be it. I'll consider the clock and the two hours until departure and give in to my overactive brain.

It's all right. Sleep is overrated. The children are sleeping, soundly, with no idea of the changes ahead. They take things day by day, lucky darlings. They couldn't care less where I stuck the portable DVD charger (unless the movies won't play and then, heaven help us) or whether I have enough diapers, they won't check the passports over and over like an insane person all day tomorrow. They'll just delight in the airplanes and whine when they get tired and hungry and bored and sleep the sleep of the innocent (oh please god let them sleep the sleep of the something) curled up in their seats on the ten hour leg to Japan.

My excitement built all day, with each good bye, each loose end tied and tucked, each item checked off the list. I remember this feeling, the possibilities, the closing of one existence and opening of oneself to another. Once upon a time, I did it for months at a time with only this backpack.

Look at me. Hands free. Such mobility. Such ease of passage. I scoffed at the weighed down and over packed ones.

Tomorrow, we won't travel quite so light.

I mean, holy ever loving luggage, could we have any more crap? Karma is a bitch, I believe. The three on top are the important ones, the rest are just extras. I'm sorry Portland and Narita. That whirling dervish of noise and whining, dirty, possibly smelly children? Just ignore it. It will move on eventually.

I'm going to close comments on this one because I can't possibly respond. To all my friends who visit me here, I'm sorry. Visiting blogs and responding to emails and acknowledging lovely awards has fallen by the wayside, sad victim to the last mad rush. It sucks. I miss you all! Next week, I'm going to find a nice spot in the tropical sun, dig my toes into the sand, and finally catch up properly. Until then...

The sun has gone to bed and so must I, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

10 Ways to Use Laser Sharp Focus to Get More Done

2008-10-30T22:48:08Z

Article by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead.

There’s an old Confucius saying that goes “If you chase two rabbits, you catch none.” This is especially true when forming new habits and trying to be more productive, but how many times do we do exactly the opposite?

We try to do as much as possible to grow, learn and better ourselves. We read books, blogs, and soak up all sorts of information on creating new habits. The fact is, a lot of this effort is in vain. Our attention is pulled in so many directions, that our energy is spread too thin.

It doesn’t help much that our lives have become increasingly complex. We have more ways to communicate than ever before: face-to-face, phone, email, instant messaging, twitter, blogging, etc. We have more tools to get work done, but our energy is diminished after being pulled in a million directions.

If we know that we need to focus, why don’t we use what we already know? If we supposedly know how to change, why don’t we change? If we know what’s wrong, why don’t we fix it?

I think the answer to this question is a little more complex than what can be looked at in a simple blog post. But in short, I think the answer is a matter of energy. It’s not a lack of confidence, but the lack of ability to make a serious commitment. Commitment isn’t just thinking about really wanting something. It’s not just reading something on a few different blogs and thinking “oh yeah, I’ve read that a few times, I know.” Reading or seeing something isn’t enough. You have to put your energy behind it enough to be able to move from point a to point z. If you’re trying to hit points c, s, q, y and t (which might represent other goals you have) you’ll get distracted. You lose focus and your energy fizzles.

If changing your habits and your life means only focusing on one thing at a time, how do you defend yourself from productivity ADD? Here are 10 tools to help you:

Deep focus instead of multi-tasking. We often kid ourselves thinking that we’re getting more done by multi-tasking, but we often end up just spending a lot of time spinning our wheels. Try to focus on one thing deeply, instead of spreading your attention across multiple tasks.
Wraps up tasks that are easily completed. Most of the time I’m having trouble staying focused is because there a bunch of little things on my mind that I know I need to do. Write down everything that can be completed in less than 10 minutes and finish everything on the list before you start on a project that requires more focus. This doesn’t mean that every time something comes up that would take less than ten minutes to do, you do it. You simply batch everything together that requires ten minutes of time or less.
Stay in the now. As much as you can, practice focusing your attention on the present moment. Constantly move your attention back to now. If you have trouble with this, you might want to get this watch.
Respond, don’t react. Our tendency to react to what seems “urgent” hurts us in the long run. I would rather write an amazing book in a year, sacrificing things like replying to email and having a super clean house. Block out time in your day for the things that are really important.
Feng shui your workspace. What’s the most important thing to you? What are you really passionate about? For me, this is writing and music. I feng shui my work area to speak those things. I have writing books on my shelves, I have musical instruments around me. I have a cork board that has my writing goals and inspirational quotes about writing that speak to me. Having these “attention reinforcements” helps you to stay focused on what is most important to you.
Give yourself a meaningful purpose. You’ll have a hard time staying focused if you feel the work you’re doing isn’t meaningful. If you’re having trouble staying focused at a job you’re not passionate about, it’s likely because you have no interest in the work you’re doing. There’s no motivation for you other than a paycheck. Find a career that has meaning and gives you a sense of purpose and your motivation and focus will naturally increase.
Distinguish between urgent and important. We often spend most of our time doing things that seem important, but really aren’t. They are just urgent. This doesn’t really make sense, because it would seem things that are important, should be urgent, right? If you want to do meaningful things, if you want to accomplish things that will have a long-term impact, focus on the important.
Visual how you want your day to evolve. If you don’t really know exactly how you want your day to go, how can you expect it to go the way you want it to? In order to combat random events and unknowns keeping you from doing what’s important, take time to visualize how you want your day to go. Pay attention when you visualize certain things to how they make you feel. Use positive visualization to control how you will react when certain events come up that detract you from keeping focused.
Practice single pointed focus. It’s hard to imagine staying focused when there are so many possibilities of things you could be doing. Sometimes priorities aren’t enough to keep you motivated, it’s just a matter of flexing your focusing muscles. Here’s a good meditation to get you started on flexing your single minded muscles: Close your eyes and imagine that you are sitting alone in a chair in a room (it doesn’t really matter where). Now imagine there’s an apple on the table in front of you. Try taking bites of that apple in your mind, and focusing on the taste and sensations of the apple. Look at how the different bites are taken out one at a time. Practicing this and other types of meditations will greatly enhance your ability to focus on one thing for long durations of time.
Practice mindfulness. This seems so simple, but it’s often the most difficult thing to do. How often when you’re eating, are you thinking about all sorts of different things, other than your food? How often when you you’re spending time with a friend, is your mind wandering on other things? You can’t expect to be focused if you’re not paying attention to what is going on around you. The next time you wash your hands, focus on the feeling of the water and the sensation of the towel when drying your hands. When you’re eating, focus on the taste and texture of the food in your mouth. You can’t expect to be focused in your work, if you constantly lack focus in every other area of your life. Practice focus in the normal everyday things you do, and it will start spilling over in to your work.

This article was written by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead of the Illuminated Mind blog. For more ways to defend yourself from productive ADD, grab a subscription to Illuminated MInd.

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How to Find Your Purpose in Life

2008-10-30T18:19:08Z

[Note: This is the 3rd article in the series How to Make Your Dreams a Reality.]

Growing up, I spent a lot of time thinking about the purpose of life. In church they would tell you the purpose is to go to heaven and to be a good person. “Why?” I always thought. There’s no question that being a good person is essential for living a fulfilling life. But what’s the point? Why do anything at all?

Why is a meaningless question. The reason being, why always leads us in an infinite loop. You can always repeat the answer to “why” with another “why.” The only time the question really ends is when you answer “because it’s fun” or “because I enjoy it.”

This took me a while to accept, but the purpose of life is to enjoy it. If you’re trying to find the purpose of life, by looking for something outside of life, you’re never going to find an answer. That’s because the purpose of life is life.

That doesn’t help you much, does it? We all want a larger purpose, something to give our lives meaning when everything seems meaningless.

The truth is, life doesn’t have a purpose. That’s hard to swallow. When I realized this, I felt lost. I felt confused and I felt like giving up.

What I failed to realize is that life doesn’t have a purpose because of free will. There is no purpose forced on you. You can choose to have a purpose, or to not have a purpose, but life isn’t going to give you one. You don’t need to let this bother you though. The only reason you need for having a purpose is because you want one.

The only question you need to answer now, is do you want a purpose or do you not want one? As soon as you figure that out, let me know. I’ll wait.

I’m assuming that if you’re still reading, your answer was yes. That’s good, because not having a purpose isn’t very fun. At least not for me.

Now that we have that sorted out, we need to understand one crucial thing that drives people to insanity and causes them to spend their lives in the confines of a cubicle.

And that is:

Your purpose is not your job

Yes, that’s right. Your purpose has nothing to do with your degree, your resume, your career, or vocation. Your purpose is independent of all those things. In fact, it’s much bigger than any of those.

Purpose has to do with your creative self expression. It has to do with what makes you feel alive. It’s something you do, where at the end of the day you think “I made a difference.”

Now, if you want to find out what that is, take a minute to do a little exercise that I originally found here.

Take out a blank sheet of paper or open word, notepad or textedit. Whatever works best for you.
Now write at the top “What is my true purpose in life?”
Write everything that comes to mind. Don’t think about it too much, just write.
Keep writing until you write something that makes you cry. That is your purpose.

When you come up with your final answer, you will know it. It won’t be something you’ve decided logically, you will simply know it in your heart.

If you find this exercise to not be structured enough, change the question to “How would I want to be remembered when I die?”

After you’ve discovered your purpose, your job is to live as closely in alignment with it as possible. The more you live in alignment with your purpose or your bliss, the more you will deeply enjoy your life.

Now remember when I said that your “job” is not your purpose? Well, it’s half-true. Your career can be a medium for the expression of your purpose. If your purpose is to help others live in truth and express your inner creativity, you’re probably not going to be able to do that very well working as an file-clerk for a company that is greedy and self-serving. You can live partially in alignment with your purpose this way, trying to help others and going against the morals or your employer, but you’re still ultimately assisting corporate greed.

You’ll probably find living in complete harmony with your purpose isn’t easy. It might take you a year, or a few years before you find a medium (a career path) that best serves the expression of your purpose. If you can’t find a job out there that does that, you might have to create one (like I’m doing here, through this blog).

So how do you move more in alignment with your purpose? How do you take your purpose and your dreams and make them a reality? That will be the next article in the series. See you next week!

For more ways to make your dreams a reality subscribe to Illuminated Mind today.

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How To Do What You Love Without Selling Your Soul

2008-10-23T23:30:13Z

Article by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying before “do what you love and the money will follow.” It’s a very cliched and abused axiom. Sometimes the money does follow when you do what you love. Sometimes the magic works. But most of the time, it does not.

When translated into reality, the old saying usually turns into “do what you love and find a way to make it popular and the money follows.” Or “sell your soul and the money follows.”

On the other side of the problem is that if you’re going to make a living doing what you love, you have to find a way to market yourself. Things that are catchy, marketable, and popular are often out of alignment with what you really want to do.

Let’s take the example of the musician. Say his name is Joe. Now, Joe wants to make a living off of his music. Luckily, Joe was born with a lot of creative talent, so he doesn’t have to work very hard at that. But he wasn’t born with the technical ability to play guitar. So, he has to learn how to play. He works hard. He practices scales, fingering, melody and rhythm. He knows that he’s not going to magically wake up one day and be gifted with the amazing ability to play Beethoven’s fifth. That’s why he practices 4 hours a day. He’s dedicated.

After a few years, Joe becomes a pretty incredible musician. He has a full album of songs ready to record. The only problem is Joe sees that his type of music isn’t the type of music that’s played on the radio. Far from it actually. He’s conflicted. So what does he do? He wants to make a living playing music, but he doesn’t want to compromise his integrity by writing songs that he knows will sell. He puts that thought on hold for a while and focuses on finding gigs. Since he’s worked so hard, he picks them up pretty easily. His music is starting to catch on and he’s building a modest following. But that question keeps egging him. If he wants to quit his day job and pursue music full time, he’s going to have to confront that aching question: to sell or not to sell? Should he go for the safe bet and aim for popularity, or should he stay true to himself and preserve his soul?

This is the question that every creative individual has had to face at some point or another. I’ve had to face this question many times and the truth is, it’s not easy. Remaining authentic while trying to market yourself is a tricky business. It doesn’t help that the type of marketing we see day in and day out on television, radio and print is usually downright sleazy or questionable, at best.

So is there such a thing as authentic marketing? Because we all know, your business isn’t going to sell itself. Even if you’re not in business for yourself, and you just want to actually enjoy what you do for a living, you have to find a way to market yourself. Is it possible to scrub out all the mental dirtiness marketing conjures up, and find a way to make it clean? Or at least authentic? I think so. And I’ll tell you how.

First of all, you have to drop the preconceived idea that selling yourself is evil. In a perfect world, you would create a product or service (whether that be being a musician, or otherwise) and it would sell itself. Customers would flock in and you would be scrambling to try to serve them all. In reality, this is far from the truth.

In the real world you have to give people a reason why they want what you have to offer. The art of marketing is effectively communicating in an interesting way, the reason they need what you have. Maybe you’re an authority if your field; maybe you’ve painstakingly studied your area of expertise. Maybe you know something “they” don’t, but need to know to solve their problem. There are a lot of sleazy ways you can do this (special offer ends in 30 minutes for the first 7 inquiries, call now!) but there are also a lot of ways to do this that aren’t gimmicky and don’t make you feel like you’re selling yourself out to make a buck.

What I’ve come to realize, is by focusing on providing value to others, most of the marketing aspect takes care of itself. When you get too sucked into the marketing side of things, you end up becoming so focused on how to make something popular that the value suffers. In the same way, if you focus too much on the value side, you’ll lack having a clear plan of communicating that value to others (which is really all marketing is). You don’t have to kill your dreams.

If you can focus on providing massive value to other people and figure out an engaging way to communicate that value, everything else will take care of itself. You’ll still have to work hard, but you won’t have to worry about sacrificing your authenticity. And you won’t have to worry about selling your soul to do what you love.

I’ve learned that helping others (providing value) and increasing my knowledge and skills (increasing the ability to provide value) is the key to success.

In the spirit of this post by Leo, I’d like to end this with an offer. How can I help you? Drop me a line on the contact form on my blog, or respond in the comments.

This article was written by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead of the Illuminated Mind blog. For more ways to make a living, not a dying, grab a subscription to Illuminated MInd.

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The Number One Dream Killer: Doing What Works

2008-10-22T19:31:15Z

Note: I’m sorry if you’ve already seen this. I did something really dumb and accidentally deleted a few of my posts. If you’re seeing this again, please ignore. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Note: This is the 2nd article in the series How to Make Your Dreams a Reality.]

I’ve wasted a lot of time in my life doing what works. I can’t count how many times I’ve used this excuse to stall pursuing my dreams.

I went to college because that’s just “what works.”
I go to a job and sit in a cubicle for 8 hours a day because “it works.”
I don’t work on the weekends because I feel I need to reward myself for a week’s worth of drudgery. I have to say… “it just works.”
I do the expected things. I try to make art because I’m supposed to be creative. I read because I’m supposed to learn. I dress a certain way because I’m supposed to be cool.

It’s not working.

I’ve previously written a lot about the importance of following your own path and not living life based on a template. The truth is, it’s damn hard not to. The few of us renegades that have evolved past living based on conventions and social norms are trying to keep our heads above water. But the mainstream, the sea of “what works,” seems to keep pulling us back under.

The mainstream isn’t working for me (in fact, I can’t remember a time it did). Common sense isn’t working for me anymore either. I don’t need to do things that are common. I don’t need to do things that make sense to other people. I don’t need to go with the grain. I don’t need to take the path of the most resistance. I don’t need to follow the leader. I need to follow myself.

Doing what works is killing our dreams because we have this expectation to follow a pre-planned life. All throughout our schooling we’re taught the same things. We’re given a template for life that just doesn’t match up with what we really want.

It doesn’t match because it’s a template.

We may never find the job of our dreams. We may never find anyone who can answer our deepest questions about life. We may never have anyone show us how to live the lives we imagine.

We won’t find it because it’s not us. The only one who can answer those questions is really ourselves.

So if we want to make our dreams a reality, we have to stop doing what works. We have to abandon the mainstream and embrace the unstream. This means that we have to:

Take risks and possibly make a fool out of ourself once or twice (or 200 times).
Make things up as we go along and generally have no idea what how we’ll get to where we want to go. We just know that we can’t settle for anything else.
Listen to our hearts. See with our hearts. Feel with our minds.

All of this is hard because it’s so easy to do what works. It’s so easy to follow the path that’s already been paved.

It’s not as easy to do what’s never been done. It’s not as easy to follow your dream of becoming a blogging entrepreneur on collectible 16th century mushroom lamps when no one else has ever done it. It’s not as easy to create a job for yourself, when you could just as easily fill out an application for one that already exists.

So if you want to make your dreams a reality. You’re going to have accept the fact that you’re going to have to be your own boss. Instead of following the rules, you make up your own rules.

Following the unstream

This past February I started this blog. I didn’t know what I was doing. I had experience as a web designer, but I barely knew what a blog was. I found a lot of hype online about making money from blogs and I got excited. I thought that maybe this would be my ticket out from the 9-5 grind. Then I got a reality check. I found that most blogs never make any money. Even more discouraging was the discovery that most blogs that make money, are about how to make money online! People are willing to pay money to learn how to make money. But people aren’t as willing to pay for information on a blog. That’s why it’s a blog. It’s supposed to be free, right?

I realize that in order to make a living blogging, it takes a long term investment. It also takes a willingness to accept a lot of strange looks when you tell people you’re trying to start a business blogging. People will doubt you. They’ll think you’re crazy. They’ll tell you that you don’t know what you’re doing.

And you know what? You probably don’t know what you’re doing. I didn’t. I still don’t. Life is a messy business and trying to have everything figured out in advance is likely to bring more stress than it relieves.

Knowing what your doing has to no longer be a determining factor in the pursuit of your dreams. I don’t know what I’m doing. All I know is that I’m not doing “what works” anymore. I’m doing what works for me. I’m following my own heart, my own path to happiness, wherever that may lead me.

I’m trying my hardest to overcome the voice of practicality. It’s difficult sometimes going to a 9 to 5 and running this blog at the same time. But I would rather be doing that, not knowing when my dreams will be realized than accept just doing what works.

If you’re off the beaten path, you may be lonely. But that’s a good thing. Because when you know you’re treading uncharted waters, you’re following the compass of your heart.

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TEDTalks : Your genes are not your fate - Dean Ornish (2008)

2008-06-16T06:00:00Z

Dean Ornish shares new research that shows how adopting healthy lifestyle habits can affect a person at a genetic level. For instance, he says, when you live healthier, eat better, exercise, and love more, your brain cells actually increase.

Fact: Last month I made almost as much from my blog as I spent on burritos.

2008-10-23T14:33:51Z

Me: Dude. I’m in the top 3,500 blogs on Technorati. And I didn’t even kill any other bloggers to get there. Yet.

Victor: Huh. Do you know how many people were in my high school? Like…2,000. So basically you could fill my whole high school with bloggers who are better than you. TWO high schools, even. Like if the entire city of Midland had blogs you wouldn’t be as good as any of those people.

Me: It’s a little impressive.

Victor: Yeah. It’s like World’s Greatest Grampa. Except you’re like the world’s 3,500th greatest grampa. And you’re not even a grampa. Congratulations.

Me: Yeah, but a bunch of those 3,500 blogs are big companies who have a writing staff and don’t just write drunken posts about ninjas and sasquatch and doggie life-jackets after they get home from being an analyst all damn day. If there was a filter to look at just analysts who blog about dismembered hobo fingers I’d totally be in the top 100. Obviously you’re just jealous.

Victor: I’m not jealous. If I was a blogger I’d be number one, baby. Hide and watch!

Me: You are totally insane.

Victor: Hide… And watch.

Me: What does that even mean?!

Victor: It’s a blog-off. And I’m winning.

Me: You aren’t even blogging!

Victor: You don’t know that. If I spent as much time fucking around on the internet as you do I would have invented it.

Me: That doesn’t even make sense.

Victor: Dude. If I spent as much time on the internet as you do I would own the goddamn internet.

Me: Yeah but that’s not what you said. You said you’d have invented it.

Victor: I meant “owned”. I said “owned”.

Me: You said “invented” and I’m totally going to twitter it right now.

Victor: Whatever. Your word against mine, lady.

Me: You don’t twitter! You don’t have a word!

Victor: That you know of, World’s Greatest Grampa. It’s going to be a pretty upsetting day for you when you find out I’m actually Dooce.

Me: I’ve met Dooce.

Victor: Well then.

Me: You know, this doesn’t even matter because technically in my world of people-who-only-exist-on-the-internet my word is the only one that matters and I could pretty much make you say anything and you couldn’t do anything about it.

Victor: You know what we should do? We should go down to the mall and make you a “World’s Greatest Grampa” mug but then we’ll scratch it out and change it to words to “World’s 3,500th Greatest Blogger”. That would be awesome. You know, you are totally right, as always, and I only say these things because I’m in awe of you and you have great hair and your feet smell like zebra stripe gum. And also I love it when you use apostrophes the wrong way and break your blog and I have to spend all night fixing it. And I’ve decided that I’m never going to make you watch “Rounders” again even though I have some sort of sick compulsion to watch every damn time it’s on TV which is so bad that sometimes I’ll sit up in bed in the middle of the night and sniff the air and say “Rounders is on somewhere” and then I click through all the stations to see if it’s playing and it usually is and I make you watch it again. No more of that, my bride. Instead we’ll watch your DVD of The Young Ones and I’ll actually laugh and not roll my eyes like you’re an idiot for thinking it’s hysterical because that part where the hippie pulls all those kittens out of his pocket and says “It’s raining cats and dogs out there”? That was actually very funny and not at all sophomoric and idiotic like I implied. You know what you need right now? More box wine. And a curly straw. And a new hat.

Me: Actually I’d love a new hat.

Victor: What the fuck are you talking about?

Me: Oh nothing.

PS. Victor threatened to shut down my server if I didn’t admit that I may have misquoted him here but I’m pretty sure I’m writing what’s in his heart so it totally counts.

PPS. That title is actually incorrect because this month I spent more money on burritos than I made from blogging, but to be honest I buy a shitload of burritos.

PPPS. I couldn’t actually find a youtube clip of the Young Ones guy pulling the kittens out of his pockets so instead I just linked to The Mighty Boosh which is awesome but not related to the Young Ones at all and is a perfect example of the kind of shoddy blogging that probably never happens at The Huffington Post.

Comment of the day: I think you should get Victor a mug that says “Husband of the World’s Greatest Grandpa” ~ Summer

The Simple Truth? You’re Complicated

2008-09-29T09:00:01Z

One day you’re a rock star, jamming down the road with rock radio blasting, ready to kick ass and screw The Man. The next day, you’re subtle and sophisticated, enjoying a perfectly aged glass of scotch and nodding your head to NPR. Tomorrow, who knows? After all, you are a complicated and extremely nuanced individual.

In my life, the scenario plays out something like this. I see a picture, read a poem, or conjure up an image of a specific type of woman. It clicks. In my head, I think, “Ooh. That’s who I’d like to be. Boy, am I glad I had this realization! Life is going to be so easy from now on since I know who I am!” I imagine the lifestyle that goes along with this image, and it feels unimaginably right. If life can be considered a puzzle, I’ve just solved it. Smooth sailing and effortless happiness await.

The glitch comes when I wake up the next day and feel like a completely different person.

“Ugh. I can’t believe I wanted to live on a sailboat and wear nothing but white blouses and turquoise jewelry. Geez. I wouldn’t be able to drink red wine and make giant clay sculptures. What was I thinking?”

The Truth Behind Embracing Simplicity

Okay, so the delusional internal monologue above is a bit of an exaggeration, but not that much. Here’s the conclusion I’ve come to: Life gets simpler when we admit that we’re complicated. We’re full of contradictions, disagreements, and competing interests, and that’s okay.

Living a simple life doesn’t have to involve pigeonholing yourself into a particular lifestyle or ideology. You can geek out one day and scream your head off for your favorite NFL team the next. You can revel in getting your hands dirty and then enjoy a foo-foo spa day (a borrowed term, I assure you). Yes, you can even be a Republican on one issue and a Democrat on another.

Realizing that you’re contradictory can be a bit difficult. After all, if you don’t know who you are or what you believe, how can you have any impact on the world? It’s a valid concern. But in reality, there’s nothing wrong with fluidity, gray areas, and flexibility. They add nuance to life, and bring humanity into each and every thought you have.

Handling the Gray Areas of Life

Whatever mood you’re in, enjoy it to the fullest. Don’t worry about whether you’re acting out of character. There’s no script you have to follow. And if your tastes change, roll with it. You’re still you, and your core values are still the same, regardless of the packaging or policy that’s currently in debate.

This is equally true of taking positions on issues. Important issues are usually complex. Despite what you hear on MSNBC, changing your mind or being flexible is not flip-flopping. You’re allowed to see both sides of the coin without always having to reconcile your choices into black and white policy. Sometimes it’s not so much an issue of being a monolith for an ideology as it is being a master chef mixing unusual ingredients in surprising amounts.

After all, you’re made of a million different experiences, interactions, and relationships, each of which affects you in a different way. Of course you’re complicated! You don’t have to let go of your brilliantly faceted worldview to live a simple life. In fact, I can think of few things more simple than accepting your complexity.

Here are just a few tips to help you embrace your complexities while still living simply:

Do consider why you’re drawn to a certain image, style, or idea. Look beyond the basics to see the core value(s) it represents and focus on that.

Don’t retool your whole life each time you want to change things up. Keep your surroundings neutral and always keep your inner circle connected and along for the ride.

Do find inexpensive ways to indulge your different interests. Read a book, write a white paper, join a club or message board, or check out a show or local event instead of buying $10,000 in hobby equipment.

Don’t worry if your interests change. It’s just a natural evolution, or a part of an ebb-and-flow cycle. If an interest is truly important to you, you can come back to it anytime.

Do embrace nuance. Gray areas are okay to live in, regardless of what anybody tells you. Besides, there are more ideas to explore there, anyway, and more people to meet and learn from.

Don’t feel like you have to cram yourself into a “yes” or “no” answer for anything. It’s okay to see and even agree with both sides of an argument.

Let me know what you think. Is having a crystal clear knowledge of who you are and what you think more important I give credit for? Or is there value to admitting that complexity and contradiction are part of your life? Give me your brutally honest answers in the comments!

photo credit: Philipp Hilpert - Philography

photo credit: mugley

What We Worship

2008-10-06T07:58:04Z

David Foster Wallace, a talented fiction writer and essayist, died tragically a few weeks ago at age 46, a suicide. It’s impossible to know the kind of clinical angst Wallace must have suffered in order to make so horrific a final decision. The man’s work offers immense thoughtfulness and insight.

A cursory glance at Wallace’s writing appears to show a hyper-intellectual mind which probably regards faith as quaint and outmoded and any talk of the soul as either New-Agey or flattened by platitudes. Actually, Wallace used his prodigious powers of scrutiny in a mammoth attempt to peel away cliché, ingrained thought, or tried-and-true philosophies, all in the hope of achieving — truly achieving (and not merely taking it second-hand) — a real apprehension of Meaning. In other words, things like faith and the soul were important to him, as they are to any good writer. He believed we needn’t all be stuck inside our own heads.

These traits are evident in his 2005 Kenyon College commencement address. It’s a strange speech to give at a college graduation (although maybe not for Wallace). It meanders through the banalities of road rage at rush hour and shopping cart warfare at the local supermarket. But toward the conclusion something almost transcendent happens. Wallace provides powerful counsel regarding the importance of what we choose to “worship” in contemporary society, and the dangers of allowing intellectual habit to replace real thoughtfulness.

For today’s post I want to share the following remarkable excerpt from that speech. I believe readers will find it as moving as I do.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don’t dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death…

(Read Wallace’s commencement address in its entirety here.)

50 Simple Gifts To Give Yourself

2008-10-01T17:10:00Z

Simple Things, Little Things...

1) Gather up all of the Thank You cards you have received over time and read them again. To make this easier create a file or folder to hold these sweet treats. Devour them with chocolate--warm tea and feel your spirits lifted.

2) A new scent. Smelling different scents everyday can help with brain function. Buy a few essential oils and randomly smell one every morning. Scents like lavender, orange and peppermint can even boost your mood.

3) Use any left over time at lunch to take a brisk walk around the block or parking lot. Be a birdwatcher for 5 minutes or practice deep breathing.

4) Write a letter--they say it's the gift you give yourself (they might write you back!).

5) Bring a cut flower to work and place it in a bud vase. Smell it ever so often throughout the day or after having a brush with a not-so-nice boss.

6) Bring cut flowers into the bedroom or the bath and replace them every other day. A recent study by members of the American Academy of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery found that people who slept with the scent of rose had better dreams.

7) A bath filled with bubbles. Never underestimate the power of Thalassotherapy to put the day into perspective. Add candles, bath salts, rose petals, anything to create something out of the norm. Scented shampoo or body gels can substitute for bubble bath when in a pinch or digs that are not your own.

8) Download a book of poetry to your mp3 player and listen to snippets of sonnets throughout the day.

9) A wish board.

10) A journal to keep track of everything you're thankful for.

11) Find music you wouldn't normally listen to and play it all day, then pass it on (many libraries have large collections of music your can barrow, try World Beats).

12) Give a kiss and have one for yourself.

13) Give a hug and have one for yourself.

"'Tis the gift to be simple"

14) Steal away a moment to see and feel natural sunlight (wear sunblock!)--look out a window, take a walk, let the sunlight boost your mood and help keep depression away.

15) Take a 24 hour break away from commercial media. Borrow DVD's from the library and watch them all marathon style.

16) Hide money in your pockets before you put your seasonal clothing away and get a surprise in a few months.

17) Go minimalist in a room or two and give away, donate or sell items that are causing clutter in your space or life. Shoot for a 90% purge and make it a point to keep it that way for "X" amount of months.

18) Think about all the things that make you laugh and set out to recapture those moments throughout the day.

19) A piece of dark chocolate allowed to melt slowly on your tongue.

20) Drink incredibly aromatic teas such as honeysuckle, orange or jasmine.

21) Go vegan or raw for the day (do some planning ahead of time so you're properly nourished for the day).

22) Acquire a new acquired taste. Revel in your uniqueness.

23) Find a pond filled with koi or goldfish and watch it instead of TV.

24) Ride your bicycle ever further distances.

25) Adopt something.

26) Make it a point to smile throughout the day and at people (small children, cute pets, etc.). Turn off that voice in your head that questions why you're smiling. Allowing yourself to feel joy for no apparent reason can be a life altering realisation.

Image: snapdragginphoto.

27) Create a gossip free day (that includes Hollywood starlets!).

28) Plant a few moonflower or sunflower seeds and put it out of your mind. Months later you might be unexpectedly surprised.

29) Plant flowers that attract butterflies and hummingbirds. For a list take a look here.

30) A FEED bag.

31) Get a set of Mini Guatemalan Worry Dolls and hand all of yours over to them.

32) Always be on the lookout for 4 leaf clovers.

33) Go shopping in your closet.

34) Get an umbrella that shouts your arrival from a mile away. [see our past post on the one by Jonathan Adler].

35) Make your home a smoke free one.

36) Join Postcrossing.com. [see our past post on this website]

37) Drink plenty of clean water.

38) Find an aloe vera plant and give it new home and let it heal you.

39) A massage.

Image: Ming Mong

40) Your own private tea blend. [see our own recipe here].

41) Love letters [see our past post here on where to find them or how to write them]

42) Brand new copies of all the books you adored as a child.

43) Hold hands.

44) Smile every time you look into a mirror.

45) Sit next to a street musician for an hour or two.

46) Write down or print out every bit of encouragement others have given you. Put them in a file or folder and read them when your spirits are a bit low and defeat seems just over the horizon.

47) Tell yourself you're a very lucky person everyday. Keep unlucky out of your vocabulary.

48) Practice skin brushing and whistle while you do it.

49) Take lessons! For your voice, to learn an instrument (or relearn something you started as a child), take dance. For very reasonable lessons try your local park system programs or at community college.

50) A day to devote to opening your horizons... rock wall climbing, boating, hiking, something that's outdoors and out of your comfort zone. Again check out your local park system programs or community development programs.

"The gifts of caring, attention, affection, appreciation, and love are some of the most precious gifts you can give, and they don't cost you anything," --Deepak Chopra

I feel like singing, "These are a few of my favorite things" when I think about the above. Do you have a favorite gift that you give yourself!? Is it one of the above already? If so we'd love to know about it... think quick and jot it down in the comments section.

Image: copyright GaveThat.com.

Also Read:
- The Gift of Gratitude
- Searching for Nantucket Friendship Baskets
- How Not To Spend The Holiday's Alone

Kwai Chang's shared items in Google Reader

Digging a Little Deeper to Develop Your Emotional Intelligence

Step 1 - Become Aware of Your Recurring Emotions and Why They Arise

Step 2 - Work with Your Emotions

Step 3 - Practice Your Emotional Development

Step 4 - Celebrate Even the Smallest Wins

Fire Fly Manifesto and Career Renegade Go Live

TEDTalks : Why a free press is the best investment - Sasa Vucinic (2005)

Can You Just Enjoy a Moment?

Enjoying the Moment

Plan or Do?

Pushing the Limits

Thank You, the Most Inadequate Words

Tides

Lifestyle Design and Your Ideal World

Fans buy soccer team

I’m not even sure why we *have* katanas anymore

November 4, 2008

So Long, Farewell

10 Ways to Use Laser Sharp Focus to Get More Done

Article by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead.

How to Find Your Purpose in Life

How To Do What You Love Without Selling Your Soul

Article by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead.

The Number One Dream Killer: Doing What Works

TEDTalks : Your genes are not your fate - Dean Ornish (2008)

Fact: Last month I made almost as much from my blog as I spent on burritos.

The Simple Truth? You’re Complicated

The Truth Behind Embracing Simplicity

Handling the Gray Areas of Life

What We Worship

50 Simple Gifts To Give Yourself

I’m not even sure why we have katanas anymore