Before I read Scoble’s latest post I was contemplating this question:

What do I want from blogging and social media?

And this is the answer:

I want to meet interesting people, engage in interesting conversation, and share interesting stuff with them…

And it’d be nice to make some money in the process, but money isn’t the goal.

Friendfeed will help me reach my social media goals. The more I use it the more I love it.

Take a look at my feed on friendfeed and you will see how useful it is. You can see my Reddits, Diggs, Stumbles, Tweets, Bookmarks, and blog posts all in one spot. You can comment on them and vote for them with the “like” button. You can follow some of the top social media mavens like Muhammad Saleem, Zaibatsu and Jon Phillips and see what’s hot before it breaks. And you can do this without checking a hundred different websites or feeds.

Right now I am trying to find a way to implement friendfeed on my blog, but I think it is going to take a redesign.

I haven’t figured it all out yet, but I know enough to endorse it and encourage you to join friendfeed. Let’s build a bigger community.

(Hat Tip to Robert Scoble and Paul Buchheit)

1. Be True to Yourself - This doesn’t mean a life without compromise. It means that you don’t lie to yourself. It means that you find out what is true in your heart, and you seek people, places, and experiences which support that core truth. It means you don’t settle for mediocrity. It means you keep striving for excellence even in the face of failure, because you know you are not mediocre. You know that you are absolutely unique and are capable of contributing something great. Being true to yourself means you don’t hide behind a mask. It means you’re a WYSIWYG person.

2. Have a Vision for Your Future - Take action now, with a picture of your future in mind. Have a vision that improves your life and the lives of others. Our CEO has a vision of attaching our ergonomic products to every display and laptop in the world. He never stops talking about it, because he knows if we realized even a portion of his vision, that our world would be a better place. Some people have a vision of living off the land like Thoreau (HT to Paul Buchheit). You already know how to build a vision. You do it on a small scale everyday when you jump in your car and drive to a destination. You have to start with a destination in mind or you’ll end up at some random place. So what is your life vision?

3. Avoid Debt - Debt is slavery. If you can’t afford it now, save for it. If you do decide to take on debt make sure it’s critical to your life vision. What is important enough to take on debt?
   • A home? Maybe
   • An education? Maybe
   • A business? Maybe
   • A car? Maybe
   • A pair of shoes? No
   • A latte? No
   • A night out drinking? No
   • Christmas gifts? No
   • Trendy new eyeglasses? No
   • An iPhone? No

   Make sure you’re not paying compound interest on stuff that will end up in a landfill or get flushed down the toilet. Make it a rule, to avoid debt.

4. Save - The financial experts all say, Pay Yourself First. Pay yourself at least 10% of your gross income. It’s easy if you have 10% automatically deducted from your paycheck and deposited in an investment portfolio. You’ll never miss it.

5. Continue Your Education - Invest in your mind. Few people do.
   • 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school
   • 42% of college graduates never read another book
   • 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year
   • 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years (source Jeff Jarvis)

   Traditional education isn’t an end, but a beginning. Traditional educators endeavor to create within your mind, a set of tools with which you will build a lifetime of education. Even if you never acquired a traditional education, you can still enjoy a lifetime of learning and growth. Keep an open mind, look for educational opportunity everywhere and become a wealthier, smarter, more creative person.

6. Take Responsibility for Change - If you aren’t getting the results you want from life, you’re probably thinking and doing things that are counter-productive. Only you can identify what those things are and only you can take responsibility for changing them. To discover what changes you need to make, find someone who is getting the results you want, then compare your habits to theirs. Find out how they think, how they speak, how they act, what they do, and what they value. Don’t be a phony, be yourself, but learn from other people. You can take huge shortcuts in life if you are willing learn from other people.

7. Learn from Mistakes - Not just your mistakes, but everyone’s mistakes. View history as an opportunity to learn. Some of us are embarrassed of our past and would rather just forget about it, but that can easily turn into denial. Denial is imaginative stubbornness which causes us to repeat the same foolish actions. We fear what we don’t understand, so if we don’t understand our failures we create unnecessary anxiety in our lives. To act courageously in spite of fear we must be honest with ourselves about our past.

8. Build Quality Relationships/Discard Destructive Ones - The quality of your life is directly related to the quality of the people you choose to have relationships with. Make sure your relationships are two way relationships. If they are all take and little give they are will suck the happiness out of your life.

   Love: Look for a partner who is on a similar journey as yours, who has similar goals and values, and build on your relationship by giving your love and encouragement. Be ready to compromise, because great relationships are built on shared visions not selfish ambition. Share the difficulties and the rewards. Listen closely. Be patient.

   Friendship: Look for people with similar values, who give as much as they take, with which you can share interests and hobbies. Good friends don’t try to change each other, they accept each other for who they are. Laugh, listen, and offer help.

   Business: Expect high ethical standards from your business associates. Don’t waste time with people who use questionable business models and practices, they can only muddy your name. All ethical business relationships are built upon providing mutual benefit. If you are questioning a relationship, trust your instincts and examine the relationship to see if it is lopsided. If someone is questioning you, listen and be honest with yourself. Is there a mutual benefit? Are you being fair? Can you see another perspective?

9. Do the Right Thing Even When it is Unpopular - Have you ever gone along with the crowd and said or did something you knew hurt someone else? Most of us have. I have, and I’m not proud of it. Every time you fail to stand up for what you know is right, it leaves a little hole in your soul. It’s like cutting flesh away, it will heal but it leaves a scar. You can’t change other people, but you can call them on their bullshit or walk away when they are acting like Neanderthals.

10. Honor Your Commitments - Do not make commitments lightly. Before you commit to anything, think it through with your heart and your mind, and if you have doubts, don’t commit. But if you do commit, follow through. Our biggest commitments are to our spouses and our children. If you fail to honor those basic commitments, the damage can last generations (This is not to say that you should stay in an abusive relationship. If you are in one, get out. The abuser has already broken his commitment). Our business commitments can be nearly as important. If you fail to pay your bills and honor your contracts, you will see opportunity evaporate. Others will lose trust in you, which will destroy your relationships.

11. Be Charitable - Now that you’re saving 10%, take another 10% and give it to a worthy cause. I am sure some of you are thinking, “whatever, he’s talking about rich people, not me, I don’t have enough money to give any away.” No, I’m talking about you. If you only make $1000 per month then you only have to give away a 100 bucks. If you can’t give away $100 now, it will be even harder to give $1000 later. Why? Because it will add to your overall well being. You’ll feel better about yourself and your world and it will come back to you ten fold. Being miserly will not improve your life, generosity will.

A Special Thanks to Seth Godin who inspired this post with Is it Worthy?

We have some cool things going on at Ergotron (that’s where I work) that will help keep you well when you spend time at your laptop or desktop.

We just created this hilarious video (it’s funny - it really is - I swear - watch it) which clearly illustrates why you need to go dual with a laptop and monitor and get them off your desk and make them height adjustable:

Another cool thing is… we have a CEO who blogs! When Joel took the leadership position at Ergotron he created a set of expectations and behaviors he felt we must embrace to become a great company. #7 is We Will Accept No Walls or Barriers Between Us and Our Customers. His openness to blogging reflects our principles and is one the reasons I am proud to say I work at Ergotron.

• Where does the past go?
• Where does the future come from?
• Why can we only act in the present moment?
• Why are people judged by their past when they can do nothing to change it?
• Since we can’t change the past, why are we not judged by the decisions we make now, in the present moment, the only place any of us live?

Today, it’s easy to answer the last two, but that still doesn’t explain the first three. Some say time is all an illusion, because there is no past nor future only an eternal now.

Knowing that all my past moments have created my present moment and my present moment will create my future moments, leaves me in awe of the power each of us has over our lives. The modern concept of time management has always bugged me for this reason. I have no desire to manage my time like a machine, because at my very essence I am time and so are you.

Over the years, I’ve asked myself, what can I do to solve my problems with time? And many years ago I found the best answer I have ever read in Leadership - The Inner Side of Greatness by Peter Koestenbaum.

Direct your life so as to make work part of your life - part of living from the inside out, part of your inner production of time. Do not separate work from home and leisure. Do not compromise your full self-disclosure. Know your meanings, and commit yourself to them. Existence is not an easy task. It takes a lifetime to come close to achieving authenticity. But as you move in that direction, your problems with time management will resolve themselves. This works; nothing else does. Do not stop organizing your time, but know the difference between a true solution and an anodyne.

You will never be totally true to yourself, but to the degree that you make a commitment in that direction, and to the extent that you approximate that ideal, the world will respond. This means that your health will improve - your physical, spiritual, intellectual, emotional, relational, educational, and financial health. You will attract from your environment the people, systems and financial support required to fulfill your deepest essence, for what you do is also the most natural thing to do. This new health springing from within, will express itself in diminished problems with time. To accomplish this is the slowly unfolding project of a lifetime. Each day that you embark in this process can feel like a success.

Peter Koestenbaum’s book isn’t a trendy new book. It’s old and I don’t think it was popular when it was new. But if you’re unfamiliar with his work, I suggest you start with this article in Fast Company. Do You have the Will to Lead?

“Everything I do,” says Koestenbaum, “is about using themes from the history of thought to rescue people who are stuck.” His logic: Change — true, lasting, deep-seated change — is the business world’s biggest and most persistent challenge. But too many people and too many companies approach change by treating it as a technical challenge rather than by developing authentic answers to basic questions about business life. “We’ve reached such explosive levels of freedom that, for the first time in history, we have to manage our own mutation,” declares Koestenbaum. “It’s up to us to decide what it means to be a successful human being. That’s the philosophical task of the age. Nothing happens unless you make it happen. As a leader, everything is your responsibility, because you always could have chosen otherwise.”

I suggest you read his works. Peter will give you a whole new way of looking at time management, GTD, leadership, and personal development.

He also illuminates the fallacy that we control anything but ourselves. We think we do, but we don’t. Well, at least not the way we think we do. All external control is an illusion. The only control you have is self-control. However, that doesn’t absolve you of responsibility, you are responsible for the things that happen in your external world, because their creation begins in your inner world. It is a paradox which sounds like hocus-pocus nonsense. It isn’t. It’s as real as the pain you feel when you smack your head on a rock.

I will leave you with my all-time favorite quote from Peter, one that resonates with the recent discussion we’ve had here about control and parenting:

Does developing the will to transform mean that you can actually will others to change?

Taking personal responsibility for getting others to implement strategy is the leader’s key polarity. It’s the existential paradox of holding yourself 100% responsible for the fate of your organization, on the one hand, and assuming absolutely no responsibility for the choices made by other people, on the other hand. That applies to your children too. You are 100% responsible for how your children turn out. And you accomplish that by teaching them that they are 100% responsible for how they turn out.

Are you weary of the same old shit in the blogosphere?

I am. A lot of posts out there are mind numbing. It’s becoming an echo chamber. Most days I look through my feed reader and I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, heard it before. Give me something new. Something with an attitude. Something with some originality.

Want something refreshing and new? Here it is.

Clay Collins is doing great things with thegrowinglife.com. IMHO - He has put together the best blog since 2006. He’s smart, he’s original, he’s got perspective, and most of all he’s got guts. He was unschooled, he started a software company at 15, and he’s putting his heart into his posts and it shows.

I don’t need any tips on organizing, or being more productive, or making vegetarian dishes, or decluttering. I want perspective, human perspective on life and Clay gives his perspective with abandon. I love it, because I want to know how others view the world, what does and doesn’t work for them.

Perspective

This is what Clay Collins wrote about his struggle with perspective:

Being a perspective junkie, I wish more blogs communicated perspective, rather than advice and information (such as news).

But the common practice of trafficking advice and information on the blogosphere makes sense. It makes sense because perspective is a pain in the ass to put into words: putting forth the effort required to write perspective-filled & feature-length posts on a consistent basis isn’t sustainable for most people. It isn’t for me at least.

Thank you Clay, for stating that so eloquently. I appreciate your effort to give us your perspective. You are fostering the conversations we need to have in the blogosphere.

Unschooled

Clay is an unschooled/homeschooled adult. I have never met an adult who was homeschooled let alone unschooled. What a treasure his perspective is. I’m 39, and my research, my experiences in public schools, and the dramatic differences I’ve noted in my observations of homeschooled children has led me to become a proponent of unschooling/homeschooling (and other alternative education). In the 1970s when I was child, almost no one was homeschooled. In fact, I didn’t hear about the practice until I was in my mid-twenties. Although I hated school as a child, I spent most of my adult years believing that public schools were an important institution. Even when I ran for Minnesota State House in 1996, I was a firm believer in the “School System.” A change of heart came after I had children when I realized after much soul searching that I could not subject them to the insanity of the public school system. Seeing the quality of Clay’s work, a mind that is free of “systemized” nonsense, is a confirmation of my observations about forced institutional schooling.

Like many bloggers, Clay probably doesn’t want to come off as a narcissist, but I urge him to give us his adult retrospective on being an unschooled child.

Debunking Personal Development Tripe

Clay also debunks a lot of personal development tripe. He says things I’ve been thinking and feeling but hadn’t found the words to express, like, productivity as a value stinks. The only good reason to be productive is to produce the life you want to produce. For example, I want to spend more time with my boys. Some people might think that is unproductive. Our culture believes that productive men work, generate income, fix things around the house, work on the car, but they don’t spend all day playing with children. When I told people I was considering staying home and homeschooling my boys, they thought I had lost my mind. But to me it is one of the most productive things I could imagine. Productivity isn’t about completing a bunch of tasks, it’s about finding a way to do the things you want to do.

The Cost of Personal Growth Can Be Too High

Clay also writes about the cost of personal growth. For some of us the price is too high.

I’ll probably get some flack for saying this, but I’ll say it anyway: most marriages, most relationships will have a difficult time surviving radical personal growth and evolution.  Relationships can become dependent on hundreds of implicit agreements, patterns, rituals, and shared views of reality and it often puts an unendurable stress on a relationship when these agreements, patterns, etc. are relentlessly challenged, ignored, or changed.  Good relationships can survive depression, and terrorism, and prison sentences, and all kinds of horrible things, but radical growth is a difficult (but not impossible) to survive.  It’s a tuffy.

I’d like to sugarcoat things and say you’ll never have to chose between your marriage and radical growth, or your children and radical growth, but that’s just not the case.  The are priorities that I will always put before such growth because sometimes rapid growth just isn’t worth it.  Sometimes its better to opt for deferred compensation.

He’s right. Sure you could get six pack abs, earn 5 handicap, run a marathon, make $500,000 a year, or you might even solve the economic problems in Africa, but if you lost your family in the process, would it be worth it? I’ll let you guess my answer.

Finally, Clay is doing this full time, he’s taking a big risk to give us this valuable resource, stop by his site and read a few pieces, if you like it, subscribe and leave him a donation.

I want as many people as possible to find this free information, so I have an offer you can’t refuse.

If you review Free Personal Development Material on your blog/website, contact me or leave a trackback to this post, and I will publish a link to your website. Not only that, Lyman Reed has agreed to publish another link to your site on Free Personal Development Material. How can you refuse a deal like this? It is a win, win, win.

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Stop by and see his wares. You could spend a month at his site and not soak it all in.

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This is an insightful comment left by Chris on a recent post about being remarkable:

Steve, the problem with all this is that the time it takes to develop one’s gifts is usually wasted in the modern jail for youth known as school. One’s entire childhood and adolescence is wasted in what Thomas Armstrong correctly calls “the worksheet wasteland.” You’re not given any choice in the matter, you’re just forced to waste all day, every day on pointless, tedious, banal busy work. It’s impossible to develop your God-given talents in this tedious, mind-rotting, soul-destroying context.

I had dreams, lots of them. But they were unachievable, because I spent almost my entire twenties playing catch-up. I had to learn all the things I didn’t learn before. I’m perfectly aware of the need to take risks, but talents are not something you’re just born with. They have to be honed & developed. Yet they CANT be developed unless you had the good fortune to be home-schooled, or realized early enough how pointless school is and opted out. If you don’t realize that soon enough, by the time you’re in your twenties it’s almost too late.

I did not make a series of “safe” decisions, because I did not make any “decisions” at all until the time I needed to hone my talents had passed me by. Everything in my life was mapped out for me. Life just isn’t the way you describe it in this post. Most parents are fearful & timid and project their fears onto their children. They don’t have confidence & will make their lack of confidence in their child clear. The only thing that makes them confident about their child’s abilities is As on a report card: but if a child is compliant and gets lots of A’s, chances are they’ve already sacrificed their own interests and hobbies and talents to comply with other people’s wishes. The very time needed to find out what you’re good at, and “hone them to razor sharpness,” is completely monopolized in youth. I never had the opportunity to find out what I was truly good at, and neither did most people I know. If I’d been home-schooled, or if I’d dropped out of school, it would’ve been different.

People are not miracle workers. They cannot just magically discover what they’re good at unless they have some time to themselves. But to take that time is usually a trade-off resulting in poor marks in school, the very thing that throws most parents into a panic (at least, my parents were that way: extremely over-controlling and over-protective - only it didn’t seem that way to them because their friends are the same way). Most people are never given that time. Most kids today are even more over-controlled, having every waking hour restricted and constricted, than they were in my day. Their parents, teachers, and all the adults in their lives are control freaks. Remarkable people may have been ordinary in most ways, but in one way at least - the chance for self-discovery granted to them - they were extraordinary.

Which closely relates to what Hasref wrote in a comment to this post about being a control freak:

I believe that many people make the assumption that if children are left to their own devices that they will become “blobs of glowing Jello” because of the fact that childhood obesity is on the rise. Though I wouldn’t classify it as an epidemic, my belief is that today’s children have far more distractions that keep them sedentary (e.g. round the clock television programming that fits just about any interest, video games, etc…) than that of the generation of children before them. Couple that with the overwhelming fear propagated in the hearts and minds of the parents that someone evil will snatch up your kids while you aren’t watching keeps children from simply going outside and being kids.

Given that, I believe a measure of control must be exerted to simply break through the distractions the children face and the fear of those that care for them. I don’t believe that we, as parents, should simply just let our kids do what they want. But I also don’t believe in the authoritative, “do what I tell you because only I know what is best for you” either. The key here is balance. I control my kids to show them what I believe to be best for them; however I also try my best to listen to them to help me decide what is best for them.

An example of what I mean comes by way of education. Left to his own devices, my son wouldn’t lift a finger to do his homework. Sadly, he could really care less. I control him by checking his homework and ensuring that A) he does it and B) he does it correctly. He complains often and thinks that I shouldn’t have to check his homework. But the past has shown that if I don’t check, he doesn’t do it. I exert my control for what I believe to be best for him and his future.

Another example is that my son wanted to sign up for baseball this year. I obliged him, but told him that if I signed him up he had to finish out the season. Things were rocky at first and he was pretty adamant that he wanted to quit. I kept reminding him that he had to finish and pushed him out there to be a part of his team. At the end of the season, he had such a great time that there isn’t a question that he will be signing up next year as well. So I exerted my control to make him finish what he started. In this case, it turned out well. But even if it hadn’t, the bigger lesson was to finish what he started.

I certainly wouldn’t classify myself as a control freak, but I do, very much, control my children in order to help them become whatever it is that they wish. Education is opportunity.

As you can see these comments contrast quite sharply. In some ways I agree with both comments. How is that possible? Let me explain.

First, I’d like to ask Hasref what he would do if his kid got up from his homework, said fuck you, walked out the door, lit up a Marlboro, and got in a car with his friends and waved good bye with his middle finger? Fortunately for you and your son he hasn’t realized that this is an option. That is exactly what I did. There is very little a parent can do about it without resorting to violence. I’m not advocating this, I’m just pointing out that your control is an illusion.

Second, I agree with nearly all of what Chris wrote, my school experience was soul crushing, and it took most of my twenties to catch up. I recommend home-schools or small entrepreneurial Sudbury or Montessori schools and avoiding all large government institutions.

The vast majority adults in America went through the same crappy institutions Chris and I attended, and yes they wasted years of our lives, and in some cases suffered irreversible damage, but the fact we wasted 15-20 years of our prime on a lie isn’t an excuse to quit living. Letting go of resentment is the key to positive change. You are never too old to live your dreams. I met a couple who started their dream business in their sixties and it is still growing in their eighties. Never, ever, give up.

I write about the evils of forced schooling not to whine and complain about it, but to warn young people and new parents about what they are about to subject themselves to. I pray for the day we will stop jailing our children in government institutions.

But regardless of my ideas about forced schooling and the worksheet wasteland, in my experience children need boundaries and guidance. I cannot control the greater culture, so while I don’t personally value traditional education, I understand my values will not override the beliefs and values of the dominant culture, and my children must live in this dominant culture. The consequence of forgoing traditional education is the loss of credibility in the greater society. Sure people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates found credibility outside academia, but if you ask more than a few academics to judge them, you would find many academics describe them as cretins. Under current law, neither of them would be allowed to teach business in a public school because they aren’t “qualified”, which is a perfect example of how asinine it is to license teachers. The simple fact is, there are very serious consequences for not completing traditional school. It does not matter what you and I believe, there are people who will stop you from doing certain things without specific credentials. If you don’t abide by their rules, they will lock you in a cage (try practicing law or medicine without a license).

My oldest son says he wants to be a scientist, and he has interest and aptitude for the discipline. Now, in base reality, you don’t need a traditional education to be a great scientist, but in our modern caste system you do, if you want to be taken seriously. Education has become religious dogma. You must have the blessings of the priests to earn your credentials. I can’t tell you how damaging I believe this is, but it is unlikely to change soon, so I’d be remiss in my parenting if I didn’t teach my son about the system. And until he is old enough to understand it for himself, I am going to make damn sure I keep him on the path of his dreams and talents, and that means I am going to teach him there is value in schoolwork, if he wants to be a scientist. On the other hand, if his dreams and talents appeared to be trending toward motocross racing, I wouldn’t worry too much about his grades. Even if he doesn’t make it as a motocross racer, his interests won’t require education credentials to blossom. I always tell them that good things happen to people who put in the greatest effort. Nothing much happens to people who wait around for someone to give it to them.

With the exception of violence and imprisonment all external control is an illusion. Outside of violence, the only thing you can do to control another person is to offer incentives or disincentives for making certain decisions. But that isn’t really control, is it? The person still makes the decision for themselves. So the only real control is self-control, and that is what I believe parenting is about, instilling self-control and helping them understand that they own their decisions. There is no one to blame. I will teach them that you control your destiny through your decisions. If you are afraid a friend will call you a pussy unless you steal, the decision to steal is still yours. If your teacher says you will fail unless you turn in your assignments, the decision to turn in the assignment is yours. If, like Hasref wrote, your dad tells you must finish your baseball season, no matter what your dad thinks, the decision is still yours. You can always say no. I suppose your dad could use physical force and drag you out on the field but he couldn’t force you to engage in the game, and you must understand, if you make that choice, he’ll probably cancel the cable TV and throw the Playstation out, and he may even put you in treatment for oppositional defiant disorder. You’ve got to understand the consequences of your decisions.

Many people believe freedom is action without reaction, or decision without consequences. That isn’t freedom, that’s la la land.

Now there is the other side of this that always seems to get missed, the authority figure’s freedom. The authority figure could be a teacher, parent, government agent, or whatever. I will use parenting as an example. When our children demand something of us, it is our right to refuse to do it. Refusing to do something your child wants teaches them about freedom, because doing everything they want doesn’t make them free, it turns them into tyrants. It teaches them the exact opposite of freedom. My children are not allowed to control me or my wife. They try, and it is our job to resist their control when necessary. I am not required to give them video games, candy, and soda pop simply because they might feel sad or angry if they don’t get it. It is my choice to take that action, I have every right to refuse it, and they need to learn that. No one is entitled to someone else’s labor, it must be given voluntarily. Like adults, kids offer incentives and disincentives for compliance. In the short run it is easier and feels better to just give them what they want, but in the long run it can ruin them.

I will teach my children about freedom. But I can’t give them freedom, because real freedom isn’t bestowed from the outside, real freedom isn’t controlling other people, it isn’t action without consequence, real freedom is internal, it is inside you, the core of true freedom is the only legitimate form of control, self-control.

Alan Watts discussed the concept of Ziran (or Spontaneity) on the Alan Watts Podcast

“Ziran means spontaneous, it happens as your heart beats, you don’t do anything about it, you don’t force your heart to beat, you don’t make it beat, it does it by itself. Now figure a world where everything happens by itself, it doesn’t have to be controlled, it’s allowed. Whereas the idea of God involves the control of everything going on. The idea of the Tao is the idea of the ruler who abdicates and trusts all the people to conduct their own affairs, to let it all happen, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t a unified organism and everything is in chaos, it means that the more liberty you give, the more love you give, the more you allow things in yourself and in your surroundings to take place, the more order you will have.”

Does our attempt to control each other make us sick? Is the desire for power and control the core human illness? The creation of all suffering and misery? Too strong? Maybe, but desire to control has led to most human atrocities.

Spontaneity has been one of my core values since I can remember. I feel trapped, almost claustrophobic when my life is over scheduled or externally planned. But anxiety about losing my free time is just another attempt at control, isn’t it?

One evening, I was sitting outside with the neighborhood parents when the ubiquitous subject of our children’s activities came up. A father said, “ya gotta teach ‘em to keep busy. It keeps ‘em out of trouble.”

To which I replied, “I’m trying to teach ‘em to avoid being busy. You know, so they can do what they want to do.”

“So you’re trying to raise couch potatoes?” he said.

I let it go at that.

But I must ask …
Why do so many people assume that if children are left to their own devices that they will become blobs of glowing jello? Where is the evidence?

Is it just my perception, or have modern parents replaced corporal punishment with a more damaging form of authoritarianism, the complete domination of their children’s time and movement?

What is more disconcerting is the parents who try to control their children by pacifying them with High Fructose Corn Syrup and other overindulgences.

Or are these observations just judgments from another control freak?

Do you judge how others live… and the things they believe… do you find their way of life ‘politically incorrect” or low brow?

It’s hard to see it from the inside out.

“the more liberty you give, the more love you give, the more you allow things in yourself and in your surroundings to take place, the more order you will have.” - Alan Watts

Lyman Reed at Creating a Better Life has one of the best Personal Development ebook, audio, and video archives on the internet, and the best part is, all of it is free.

Check out his latest post which links to Earl Nightingale’s video talk on The Strangest Secret. It is one of the most concise motivational speeches I’ve ever heard.

Do you believe that only people with special gifts can succeed in business and in life?

If you read this blog, I’d guess you don’t believe any of that garbage. But just in case, I am going to remind you.

Josh Kaufman recently wrote a post titled There Are No Magic Businesspeople in which a commenter named Robert wrote that he didn’t like the post, and believed that successful business people are “magic” or “special.” I must disagree.

One day, decades ago, two very ordinary, kinda ugly, New York Public School teachers, Eugene Klein and Stanley Eisen, decided to create a rock band which they hoped would be as big as the Beatles. These guys had very little musical talent (and still don’t). They could have done 30 years in the New York Public Schools and collected a fat union pension, but instead they choose a different path, and after many years of hard work, they became the biggest selling American rock band of the 1970s, KISS. They started life as ordinary people, what made them extraordinary were the goals they choose to pursue. Are they different? Special? Yes they are, today. But they weren’t in 1970. They were just like the thousands of other school teachers. What made them different? The power of decision. The decision to follow their dreams.

The goals you choose to pursue will determine your future. Why do the two tiny countries of Sweden and Finland produce an astounding number of professional hockey players while their neighbors Norway and Denmark produce almost none? Is it because the Swedes and Finns are genetically gifted hockey players while the Norwegians and Danes are not? Is there “magic” hockey dust in Sweden and Finland which doesn’t exist in Norway and Denmark? Of course not. The Swedes and Finns produce more professional hockey players because they choose to focus more time and energy playing competitive hockey. They choose to develop a talent which the Danes and Norwegians do not.

Am I saying anyone in Norway and Denmark could become a professional hockey player if he choose the focus on that outcome? No. I’m not even saying they should.

Am I saying that a group 60 year old men from outer Mongolia could form the biggest rock band in history if they simply decided to? No.

Am I saying someone riddled with rheumatoid arthritis and confined to a wheel chair could play golf like Tiger Woods if he simply decided to? No I am not.

What I am saying, is that you have the power of decision, the power to follow your dreams, and the power to make them come true, within reason. What is reasonable depends on your situation. Only you can decide what is reasonable for you. No one else can. And if you fail to develop your talent, you’ll never know what you are capable of.

One thing I can say with certainty, is that the younger you are, the easier it is to create the future of your dreams. As Paul Graham said, “the time to take insane career risks is in your early 20s. Once you have a marriage, kids, and a mortgage, it is much harder.” It isn’t impossible, but the trade offs are bigger, so you are less likely to take risks.

If you know what you love, see your talents, and hone them to razor sharpness, your odds of being successful and happy increase exponentially. If Tiger Woods had gone into law or medicine instead of golf because it was the safe bet, we wouldn’t be watching the greatest golfer to ever play the game. On the flip side if Einstein had pursued Football instead of astrophysics, he probably wouldn’t be a household name either.

I am not saying any of this is easy, and that it takes only a decision and nothing more. What I am saying is that your future is created by the decisions you make today, and if those decisions are always the safe choices, your life is likely to become routine and boring. If you start making the safe choices early in life, the odds that you will accomplish something remarkable decreases with each successive safe decision. Also, if your decisions are irrational and delusional and have no reasonable possibility of success, you’ll likely be poor and miserable. But that is the trick, because only you can determine what is possible and what is delusional for your life.

If there is anything remarkable about remarkable people it is that they appear to know the difference.