Slowly and Methodically

The question I had positioned in my sights was, how can I get more enjoyment out of every moment? The answer, I found, was to consciously attempt to go through my moments slowly and methodically; if successful, I would have found the particular moment to be slightly more enjoyable than if I hadn’t changed my way about it.

I knew the answer, but I didn’t know if it made sense to pursue it –it seemed kind of silly- or if the benefits were as dramatic as I’d hoped they were for any given moment. So I decided to search for ideas and links to the topic.

I needed something to validate the assumptions. Proof would be nice, but a sweet explanation or even an aha (!) moment would do. Meanwhile, I would test out the theories while at work, doing things slowly and methodically, only to come home and drop the idea altogether –though it was effective at work, I only sort-of pursued the idea initially. I didn’t quite understand it all, both the problem and the presumptuous answer or idea, so I kept digging, even within my own daily events.

Working my way through my to-do lists, I often found a task that didn’t seem like something I wanted to do, regardless of how important or urgent it was. In the midst of my steady productivity, reaching a task like that and finding out that I have no good solution, really felt like I was hitting a brick wall. Sure, I know to break the tasks into smaller chunks, focus on one thing at a time, and keep moving forward, but then that doesn’t guarantee that I’ll appreciate, much less enjoy, doing the task.

There are a number of solutions to actually getting something done that you might not necessarily want to do. You could piggy back the task on something that’s desirable; for example, you could run a race faster only so that you can win a prize or if you could wake up early just so that you can get to work earlier to leave earlier. In both cases, it’s not the task that you want to do just to be doing it; it’s the end result that you’re seeking and the task is just a vehicle to get there. That’s not to say that doing that is a bad idea, but it would be nice if you could also enjoy what you’re doing.

In the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, the author shows a graph which identifies the sweet spot of “optimal experience” where you perceive your skill set to fit up just right against the challenge at hand:

Many times, I found my to-do list to be filled with tasks that originate in the gray areas of that graph (anxiety or boredom, mostly anxiety). And, if I’m to check off all the items on my list, those tasks would still have to be done at one point or another. So then, why would I want to do the task? Even if the task matches my skill set that doesn’t mean I’ll want to do it.

After thinking about it for a bit, I figured that two other factors came into play when thinking of whether or not I wanted to do a task: 1) how much personal gain the task gave me and 2) how much I would have to personally invest to get it. I’ve represented this idea in the following graph:

Previously on this blog, I talked about making a Flow Chart in order to get past some of the items that populate the anxiety section of that graph from the book. I can break a task down so that it’s less intimidating and fits my skill set, and then the task is do-able. I can also say to myself that I want to do the task because it is piggy backing a higher task such as putting food on the table or one of the other basic human needs as Identified by Maslow (sans the hierarchy).

But even then, while I might do the task, I would hardly be paying close enough attention to fully enjoy the doing of the task; I might speed through it with a hardened determination in the name of one of my goals or needs. My gratification from doing the task would be short lived, serving mostly as a concluding remark to the doing of the task. That’s not ideal.

Optimally, I would both do the task and enjoy doing it. The idea that I will enjoy doing the task is enough to swing my graph closer to the “personal gain” area since I’d be gaining enjoyment out of it. But how do I get that enjoyment from an otherwise unwanted and only do-able, task?

I knew how, kind of. My mind was open to anything with a hint of “slow and methodical” in it at this point. I needed good examples of this in action. I took a look at the media I consumed, and I found it. I took a look at the people I knew, and I found it. I even remembered some of my history, and I found it. I found it in isolated events and situations but it was there nonetheless. I needed these examples to refine my own answer to the problem – a simple and practical answer is what I was looking for.

In the television series Monk, Tony Shalhoub plays the role of an outstanding police detective who has, among several phobias, a compulsive drive to pay attention to detail and arrange things in a neat an organized matter. It makes sense to attribute his success as a detective to his compulsive nature. Watching him meticulously organize his dishes and create his lunch for work, you would think he was creating some sort of detailed masterpiece but he’s just doing dishes and making lunch.

At my job, I used to pride myself on my ability to turn over drawings rather quickly using cad software. But there’s a guy I work with who puts out at least three times as much work as I do and does so while paying close attention to every single detail –compared to me, he hardly ever makes a mistake. I once had the opportunity to watch this guy work and see what tricks he had up his sleeve –with his consent of course. It soon became apparent that this guy both enjoyed what he did, and also did it ridiculously slowly. “How is it possible that this guy puts out so much detailed work when he works so slowly?” I would ask myself this while watching him slowly press and release the keys on his laptop.

While browsing my news feeds in google reader I ran into an article from lifehacker titled The Shipbuilder’s Office. This was one of their articles that featured one of their readers’ workspaces – the owner of the workspace typically writes a few words about the nick-knacks on their desks, the monitors and computers they use, the type of chairs they sit in and more. This person’s workspace also had a large shelf on the wall that held some model ships, planes, and such. The owner of all that stuff mentioned that he’d spent two years making the two more detailed looking model ships for a total of four years altogether.

Now in each of those three aforementioned examples, I see “slow and methodical”. And when I see that, I also see joy. It’s obvious to me that the people in the examples enjoy what they’re doing or what they did.

You might have seen someone in their driveway waxing and buffing their already waxed and buffed prized vehicle like it was some holy thing –or maybe you’ve seen an example of that in a movie or on tv. Doesn’t it look like they’re enjoying what they’re doing? I’ve heard it, the babying of one’s vehicle, referred to as a “labor of love”. There are countless other examples of similar things.

So it’s there, we all probably do it in isolated events, but I think it’s worth it to try it out on a full day of life. I tried it and it definitely feels good. Speaking plainly, all you do is make an effort to literally move your body and limbs more slowly and methodically, focusing on one task and then another.

After my initial quasi-run, and after digesting all the information (the same stuff I just regurgitated in this article), I decided to populate an entire day focused on doing everything methodically and slowly. I woke up, breathed deeply and slowly moved my body to the edge of the bed in an upright position. I gently slipped into my socks, feeling every thread of it comb the skin on my cold feet. Once the rest of my clothes were on, I could feel their weight sort of just hanging off of me swaying when I moved. Stepping outside into the elements felt like I had stepped on the surface of some far away paradise with sensations and noises coming from every direction. It was sensationally chaotic. Throughout the day I would notice so many little things and hear so much more than I would previously. Walking from one point to the next was like slipping into a warm bath of experience. I felt like some sort of zen master.

Work was easy, my to-do list was easy, everything was moving at the same speed (slowly and methodically). My breathing was even slow. I did a good job of catching my knee jerk reaction to do things quickly, and turning the moment around so that instead of rushing I did whatever I did slowly and methodically as if in every moment I was making a fine piece of art.

But so what? What’s the use in all of that? Is it even an important thing to do?

Until recently (today) I thought it was just a neat and worthwhile upgrade to life. Now, I no longer think it’s a novelty; now I think it’s important.

In a documentary on Netflix called “10 Questions for The Dalai Lama”, at 26:30 (total run time 1:26:36), the narrator talks about the sand mandala that Tibetan monks spend up to a month meticulously designing and building, only to destroy it shortly after it’s complete. This is done to show the impermanence of things, people, and such –or at least that’s what I read and heard so far.

How amazing! Can you imagine spending all this effort and energy making some masterpiece and then destroying it once it’s finished? I, for one, cannot – not yet at least. Since having heard about the sand mandala, I’m interested to try doing something similar so I can really feel the effect.

Aren’t our goals and projects like the sand mandala? US president Obama recently put an end to the constellation project, and a lot of the people working on that project have lost their jobs or worried that they’ll be out of a job soon. I happen to have met some of those people. It’s easy to sympathize with someone who complains about all the events they’ve missed, like their kids little leage games, date night with the wife, or sleep, only to end up out of a job due to the project getting scrapped. It seems like a huge waste of time, sacrifice, and tax dollars.

Aren’t our lives similar to the sand mandala? We spend years upon years, intentionally or unintentionally, making our lives what they are now while at the same time our lives could end at any moment. Sometimes we rush and set ambitious goals for our lives that, in reality, we might not live long enough to achieve – anything could happen.

Even if you could predict that you would live for exactly 70 years, why wait that long to enjoy it? Because of the unpredictability and smallness of the end result, I think it’s not only beneficial to live your moments with more attentiveness, but it’s necessary in order to experience an upgraded version of joy. You sacrifice and risk so much, too much, if you don’t.

Doing things slowly and methodically is worth it. Even if you can’t do something slowly, it’s worth it to pay attention to the sensations of the experience. If nothing else, it does help make moments more enjoyable; it’s also free and easy. Try living a day slowly and methodically, where the intention is doing things for the simple act and enjoyment of doing them.

On that note, I’ll leave you with more words:

“Life passes most people by while they’re busy making grand plans for it”

“The journey is the reward”

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

“In between goals is a thing called life that has to be lived and enjoyed.”

“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin–real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”

Flow Chart (an optimal experience tool)

(photo by johnnyalive)

Before I describe how to make your own flow chart, let me first talk about why I wanted to make a tool for myself.

At work, when I’m stuck on a task that’s slightly more mundane than I would like, or if I’m on a task that’s just a little too difficult for me to wrap my little to-do list around, I would tend to neglect and neglect the the task until it absolutely HAD to be done. And if it absolutely HAS to be done, then I’m more likely to do it. When the task is/was over or underwhelming, my mind, body, and soul naturally decided that it wasn’t in my best interest to tackle it. Putting off tasks until they’re soo ripe (the last minute) that they’re almost rotton (late), isn’t a very nice feeling when you know you could have performed better if you had started and continued to do the task until it was finished in the first place.

This was a problem because, regardless of what the task was, if it was assigned to me, then that meant it needed to be completed one way or another. I write little journal snips in my evernote pretty frequently at work, and I found out that when things don’t go well at work (when I don’t feel I’ve performed my best at work) , it makes me feel anxious and nervous at the same time. This is because work provides the only income for my family and when work is in any kind of jeopardy, then that means my income is in jeopardy, which means my family and livelihood are also in jeopardy. I also noticed that when work is going well, then everything else feels like it’s going well too (even if it’s not). From all that, I determined that it’s in my best interest to 1) figure out a way to not rely on work (2nd source of income maybe) so much, and/or 2) keep work out of jeopardy. Aiming for item 2, I needed to figure out a way to consistently do my best. If, at the end of the day, I know I did my best, then how anyone else interprets my best is hardly of any consequence to how I feel about what I did. I also know that if I’m not doing something I want to do, I probably won’t be performing my best. Put all that together and I’m in dire need of a format that is enjoyable and lets me perform at my best.

Now, fast forward to today (or, a couple weeks ago actually). I think I’ve figured out a way to make those mundane or really difficult tasks not only do-able but enjoyable at the same time, thus presenting an opportunity to perform better than I would’ve previously.

A solution revealed itself to me shortly after I’d read the book of Flow – I discovered the book while reading this article. If you follow my twitter, you might’ve noticed a few brain dumps where I had some aha moments while I was working towards a solution.

(available on the cheap from amazon)

The book of flow states that “The optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is order in consciousness.”

I don’t want to derail this post into a book review too much so I’ll just say that the book is very good and I recommend it to anyone who is intrigued by the phrases on the cover. If you get excited when you read the text on the cover that says “The Psychology of Optimal Experience”, then that book is definitely a must read for you.

In a nutshell, being in flow is like being “in the zone” when you’re playing a sport or an instrument. It’s like when you get addicted to world of warcraft and don’t notice the time, and your life, flying right by you. It’s definitely one of those things which makes you feel awesome if what you were in flow doing has anything to do with your personal ambitions. You probably see the results of flow a lot in sports and competitions.

(photo by *Kicki*)

Now, what are the components of flow? Fortunately there are a few sites that talk about flow and other ideas related to it., and there’s even a wikipedia article (linked in the quote) which break the book down flow to a nice component view for us.

Components of flow

Csíkszentmihályi identifies the following nine factors as accompanying an experience of flow:[3][4]
1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one’s skill set and abilities). Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should both be high.[2]
2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
9. People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.
Not all are needed for flow to be experienced.

-Flow (psychology)

When I set out to create a tool which would help me reach flow on command, it was my aim to meet all the aforementioned “components” or criteria. I assumed that if I could meet all of those criteria then I would have created a useful tool which could help me achieve flow. And, since it’s a tool, I could pretty much use it whenever I felt the need.

To start out a flow chart, you must first write down exactly what your goal is. The goal needs to be something that is sufficiently challenging -that is, it’s something that you can accomplish but is neither too easy nor too difficult for your skill set. That satisfies components 1 and 6. Using the flow chart is intrinsically rewarding because you do have complete control over it. That satisfies 7 and 8. The flow chart provides as much feedback as you need – the feedback is the text you write on the paper, and you’re free to put whatever you want on there (I’ll describe this more later). That takes care of 5. After starting the flow chart, you’ll notice that you tend to forget all about the flow chart you had just started -at least this happens for the first few trials before you’ve adapted to the paper format as a tool. When this happens, you know it is working. You have a distorted sense of time, you lose the feeling of self-consciousness, you become completely absorbed in your activity, all because of your concentration and focus. That satisfies 2, 4, and 9. All the components of flow are satisfied.

Ok so how do you make a flow chart?

step 1. write down your goal/challenge – First identify the challenge (write it down), and determine whether or not you think you can achieve it with your skills. If you can, then go flow. If not, break it down into something that’s a challenge that you believe you have the skills to meet. It can’t be too easy and it can’t be too difficult.

step 2. write down and then DO the next task that’ll get you closer to completing your goal – This is pretty self explanatory. Just go along and do whatever it is which you set out to do. Of course, you might figure out that you set out to achieve something which is probably outside your skill set or just too daunting to handle, and in that case you would move on to step 3. If you completed your task, you would also move on to step 3.

step 3. repeat step 2 – If you got to step 3 because you felt stuck on a task that was too daunting for you, then in this step, you would typically cut out a small slice of the daunting task and tackle that. You could keep cutting it down until you get to a task that fits you better. If you got to step 3 because you completed and crossed out your previous task, then keep going. On to step 4.

Step 4. repeat step 2 again – keep going and going and … FLOW!

The purpose of this chart is to direct some flow into those tasks which are kind of difficult to start and to continue doing until you’re finished (like writing a research paper in college, or doing a science project in high school, or researching something in graduate school, or sitting behind an excel file at work, etc).

When you’re writing down the next task and the next task as you move along down your flow chart to achieve the challenge which you initially wrote down, you create a sort of backbone or compass for yourself. The flow chart would be to you what a long pole is to a tight rope walker.

” If the actual experience gets too far away from the Flow zone, the negative psychic entropy like anxiety and boredom will break player’s Flow experience. “ -Design Flow in Games

The flow chart puts some order and some direction to things so that your goals are clear and your focus is clear. Whenever you get to that point where you get side-tracked or thrown off your zone for a bit, the flow chart is right there for you to re-realize what your goal was, and from there you can adjust your next task to something that’ll bring you back into the flow zone. At any point in time you’re always and only focused on one single task. Here’s an example of a flow chart:

(click image for supersize)

This is so SIMPLE! It’s almost so simple that it seems kind of worthless to do, but before you start thinking in that direction, I’d recommend you try it out for yourself. I use this flow chart thing all the time at work. It definitely works for me, and I thought maybe, just maybe it would work for someone else.

Aside from the basic’s which I mentioned in steps 1-3, I also do these:

Set up a timer on my desktop. I press go and forget about the timer entirely until my flow session is broken. Once the flow is broken, I go back to see how long I’ve been in flow and I write down that number on the flow chart. This is beneficial to me because it lets me see how much time I burned and even challenge myself to beat my longest length of time.

Write down “incoming” distractions on the back of the paper, out of sight. I do this because I might think of something while I’m in the middle of flow, and if I give too much thought to that something, I’ll break my flow. Rather than break my flow, I’ll write down the idea on the back of the paper so that I can safely forget about it for now, until I’m finished doing what I’m doing.

Insert “flow breaks” in brackets if I get interrupted, so that I may resume where I left off. Sometimes I’ve gottah go to the bathroom, or have to run to get a printout, or have to go to the store. When these sorts of things happen, or when I’m interrupted from flow, I stop the timer and write in what interrupted me. Once I’m done with whatever that interruption was, I start the timer and go on to the next task!

Keep a flowstorm (brainstorm) space open for little doodles or writings related to the flow session. On my sheet of paper, I draw a line about 2/3rds down the page all the way across. Below the line I can scribble down anything that’s related to my challenge. It has to be on topic, if it’s not on topic it might break my flow.

Throw on the noise cancelling headphones. My headphones are basically a “do not disturb” sign for my coworkers. It’s harder to interrupt a person who has headphones on. And I think it’s pretty widely accepted that if a person has headphones on, they probably are focusing on something. Sometimes though, a coworker will have something important to tell me and they know they can just tap me on the shoulder. Even still, being broken from a flow session feels just like someone waking you up while you’re in the middle of an awesome dream; no matter how important it was for that person to wake you up, it’s still leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

I work at a desk and I typically am in front of a computer most of the time. I’ve tried to do the flow chart thing on the computer, but it really doesn’t size up to using paper as a flow chart for me. The paper format just feels much more simple, real, and makes me feel more accomplished. With paper, I get sort of a material trophy (the flow chart) to hang up on the wall. I get to look back at the paper and say “yeah, I did that … for 5 hours straight” and feel proud. This sort of feedback makes me feel very nice and I couldn’t manage to get that same feeling from a text file on the computer for whatever reason. I also get feedback from the number of tasks I’ve crossed out on the flow chart as well as the length of time that I was in flow. A smooth hour of flow is good on the soul.

Of course, mileage may vary so try it out in whatever style or format works best for you!

comments are open for this post. feel free to share your thoughts.

Happy To Influence – Toastmasters

I’ve been a member of a toastmasters club for several months now. I’ve made about 6 speeches and am almost finished with my competent communicators booklet (10 speeches) -still, I’ve got a lot to look forward too. This same time last year I had no idea what toastmasters was. When I finally figured out what toastmasters was, after reading about it on a blog, the first image that popped into my head was the support group from fightclub where Bob was giving Tyler Durden a big hug. Was toastmasters going to be like that? Oh god, is this going to be the cheesiest most embarrassing event I’ve ever signed up for!?

I decided to try it out anyway and see for myself – I’d just heard too many good things about it, I had to try. My first day at toastmasters came and went. I hadn’t made a speech during the first run, but I got to watch other people stutter and stammer over their words. It felt gratifying to know that I could go in, watch a meeting, and then decide I wasn’t interested after all. After agreeing with myself that I could benefit from the consist exposure to public speaking, I decided to fork out the cash (22 bux) and join.

Soon it was time for my first speech, The Icebreaker. Turns out, it was a super challenge to get up there and talk in front of a group of people – I could feel myself acting nervous, and that feeling would make me even more nervous! I was no better than the other people I had previously seen tripping over their words. But that’s why I was there – to feel those feelings and eventually get over them. It felt bad to know I had made a fool of myself in front of a bunch of strangers who I’d have to see again next week, but it felt great to know that I would eventually get over all of the nervousness that came with the anticipation of having to speak in public. It’s also helpful to know that pretty much every one in the club had already made a fool of themselves in front of me while I was an untouchable guest watching from the bleachers.

Six speeches in, I’m no longer a newbie and will talk it out with the best of them. Of course I still get nervous, but when I take the stage, I make my butterflies fly in line as I conduct the audience with confidence. All my focus is on embracing and entangling my audience so I often times just loose track of the nervousness, since that’s not my focus – a side effect to that is that I also often loose track of time, which gets me disqualified every now and then when it comes to voting for “best speaker” since we have time limits.

There’s a certain awesomeness one has to have in order to consistently deliver an outstanding formal speech, and although I’m not nearly close to that point, I am working to acquire that ability.  Meanwhile, I’ve learned to really enjoy the opportunity to talk to several people at once in presentation format. It is an opportunity, as a matter of fact. For me, it’s a chance to influence others in a positive way and possibly even help them out in their own lives. I can say that now, after looking back on my previous speeches, but initially I just wanted to speak better. Looking back on things, I’ve noticed that all of my speeches tend to talk about how we can improve our lives – yah know, the same kind of things that I talk about on this blog. The topics I talk about here are constantly reflected in my life.

Occasionally, I’ll get that feeling as if I’m in lecture mode too often. So rather than running from this idea of lecturing, I try to focus on talking about how doing this or that has helped my life out, or I talk about an experience that I’ve learned from and try to make my speeches more dynamic to involve the audience. If you look at other speeches made in the club, you’ll hear a lot of talk about politics, planes, memorable stories, interviews, poems, food, family and the like. But, though I’ve tried, I can’t seem to pull myself away from those motivational self-helpish topics. Sometimes I get self-conscious in a negative way and worry that I’m boring the audience with my ideas – ideas that they would probably laugh and scoff at had they seen it in book form on the self-help shelf at the local Barnes and Nobles. That kind of thinking definitely doesn’t help make the most of this opportunity.

After awhile, I began to think that I should stop trying to satisfy opinions that I’m only guessing my fellow toastmasters have, and should embrace my passion instead and just keep getting better at it. I had to dump all the negative thoughts out, put a face on them, and then counter them  just like I’d described in a previous post. I had to be just a little bit selfish and almost completely ignore what the audience may or may not think about my topics – these were just ideas in my own head after all, I hadn’t actually gone out and asked any of the club members if they liked my topics or not. So I persisted and gave my topics a little more passion and sincerity.

Last week I gave an eight minute speech. Though I was disqualified for going over my time limit (7 minutes 30 seconds), I could’ve gone even longer. Thankfully, as I love getting feedback, I was fortunate enough to have three separate evaluators for my speech. Each of them said that the speech was really passionate and I seemed to be really passionate about the topic I was talking about. That was music to my ears. I wasn’t exactly well prepared for the speaking part of my speech -I’d signed up at the last minute to give a speech since we were low on speakers- but, I knew my topic very well. I spoke about Unstoppable Passion.

During the evaluations, I saw different reactions to my speech. Some people loved my speech and wanted to hear more, other people liked the speech and wanted me to prove that I practice what I preach or encourage other people to do. I actually had one evaluator call me out. “I want to know how you follow your own advice.” Wow, I know that reaction. That’s the reaction I give when I think someone else is probably full of crap. Yes we all know that good advice, by itself, is good advice. But we also know that it’s hard to take advice from someone who does the complete opposite of they preach. If someone were to try to sell you a cheap watch, telling you how awesome the watch was and how it was top of the line, while they were wearing a completely different non-cheap watch, you’d probably be reluctant to buy what they were selling. “Why aren’t you wearing one of those watches?” That would probably be the first question you’d ask them.

While being evaluated, I was put on the spot. No longer was the evaluation about my speaking technique, my presence, my voice tone, or hand gestures. Now, everyone wanted to know if I was a fraud! How am I going to answer this persons plea for proof?

I asked myself the same question recently, but in a different context. How can I start a blog about “upthinking”, being positive and reaching goals, without having some sort of credibility or proof for my audience?

While I don’t think that it’s necessary to walk the walk in order to show other people how to get from point A to point B, I think I sleep better at night knowing that I have given someone else PROOF, knowing that I practice what I preach, knowing that I’ve set a good example for someone else to follow.

On the other hand, if I don’t personally follow the path that I basically suggest that others follow, I feel like a liar and a negative influence. Lets take religion or Christianity for an example: If I’m a Christian preaching about Christianity but doing non-Christian things in my free time, what kind of example does that leave for the potential Christians? Because of my own personal folly, I give the religion a bad name and a rotten taste to outsiders. No one is perfect, and we all screw up, but we need to realize that regardless of what we do or how we do something, we’re probably influencing someone somewhere out there.

Thankfully, as I had previously considered this question myself, I came up with some concrete evidence for a rebuttal to the question, “How do you follow your own advice.” In fact, while the evaluator was asking me that question, I had a smile on my face. I was smiling because I knew that I had then hooked the audience. I knew that I had influenced the audience past the point where my tone of voice, posture, hand gestures, and speaking techniques mattered. I hit a soft spot for that whole room.

This is good. It’s especially good since, in a couple of weeks, I’m going to give them a prepared speech which explains how I have recently and deliberately chose to live with an unstoppable passion for a particular goal(s), and have succeeded. I already knew that I had to “be the change that [I] want to see in the world”. Proof! I know that half my audience are skeptics to most of the things I talk about, but this solid proof will bring them back from skeptic land into a land of potential, a land where I can better provide positive influence.

I couldn’t begin to explain how gratifying it is to know you’ve influenced someone in a positive way. But, I can tell you that it’s an amazing feeling every. single. time. Before I left the toastmasters meeting, someone passed me a note saying that my speech had touched their heart and their mind. YES!!!! That is what I live for right there.

image credit: James Hoang

Make Your Own Dream Board – Free

We know that it’s important to take periodic time-outs for ourselves throughout the day. We make time to regroup our energies, refocus and influence our thoughts in efforts to keep our heads in the clouds. There are a lot of ways that we can do this, and this post will outline another easy tactic that you can use to keep up the upthinking.

Here’s one easy trick I like to use often if not on a daily basis. I call it the “free to dream board” – haha, no I’m kidding, you can just call it a dream board. Yah know, just like the dream board they had in The Secret and other movies, except this one doesn’t require much of any manual labor – just a lot of clicking and browsing for pictures/files on the internet. This is the digital dream board! Since a significant amount of these last couple generations are regular computer users, what a convenience it is to have our very own dream board right here at our fingertips!

You can create your dream board on a lot of different sites, but I use picasaweb. Why? Because I already had a gmail account anyway, and I like the google.

This is what my dream board looked like:

The pictures you see there are just pictures I googled up on the web. You can go to a picture search engine and pick out all that you’d like on your own dream board. These pictures aren’t going to be used to sell anything or make money – they’re strictly for your personal dream board, so don’t worry about accidentally leeching/stealing. The pictures on my board remind me of what my goals and dreams are. Their precise function is to help me keep my head in the clouds.

If you’ve got perfect vision, you might notice there’s little text at the bottom of almost all of the pictures within my dream board. Those are affirmations I wrote up or picked up off the web – heh, I’ve got a quote from dune in there, and even a quote from Aristotle. In my book, if a quote hits you hard enough in the soul, it’s just as good or better than any affirmation.

Here’s one of the normal affirmations I’ve got on my dream board:

When I’ve got the time, and the privacy, I’ll throw up the dream board with some peaceful background music on pandora, place my skull between the headphones, and recharge my energy for about 10 minutes with this dream board in slideshow mode, repeating affirmations over again and finally closing my eyes so that I see myself there in the moment remembering when I used to sit at my desk and repeat the affirmations to myself.

Try it out.

(the picture there in my board is from behancemag.com – Surround Yourself With Progress)

I Think You Can (experiment in progress)

Whenever I think about doing just one thing, I get the “oh no, I’ll miss out on something else” feeling. I get that feeling as if there isn’t enough time in the world, as if I need to hurry up and finish. A lot of bloggers love the concept of doing just one thing at a time, and I’m good with that and use that strategy often. But my angst is for a different oneitis.

There are other bloggers who believe on focusing on just one habit at a time. This, while it maybe a good idea for some, does not fit my desires and really doesn’t mesh with my thinking.  I think this idea is promoted so often because no one has came up with something similar to a [push button] method to change entire lives by modifying a bunch of habits at the same time. I think if a person can be thrown on an island and forced to change their lifestyle right then and there, then a person can also take a thought and on his own free will, trade in all of his old habits for new habits in a laid out, pragmatic way – the reason that I think this is possible is because with enough passion, there is no limit to the rate/speed at which you can change your life, and if you’re lacking passion, you can probably create it. You’re not limited to one habit a month. You could change your habits entirely today. You can change your entire life this evening.

I’m putting this idea to the test [again], but I wanted to keep you guys in the know. If I make it 28 days in any capacity, well … I’ll have beaten myself. I’ve wanted to do this for awhile, and have tried a couple of times before and failed. But, with newer ways to produce passion and newer ideas that yield better understanding, I have to try again. My #1 drive for doing this sort of thing is those almost great books. I’ve always wanted to complain directly to a few authors about their content. HAY, WHERE IS THE STEP-BY-STEP!? Maybe it’s because I’m used to having instructions when someone is trying to teach a new method? Yah know, the kinds that have steps? Whatever it is, it’s those books that drive me to really find out how to change a life in a push-button style.

It’s those books that say they’re going to help you CREATE AMAZING CHANGE IN YOUR LIFE RIGHT NOW that sort of get to me. A few years ago I’d buy into that, and waste hours reading the fluff in the bookstore. Years later I found out that I’m better off reading actual content on bloggers who read through and filter through all the fluff for me, picking out the gems of value, then posting about them on their free blog.

Have you ever gone to a book store looking for that book, thinking that it’s going to change your LIFE right now, like it promises, in an amazing and drastic way, and then it just really doesn’t hit the spot? There are a zillion books on the self-help shelf right now that do just that. Some of them are great, some of them are worthless, and some of them are in the middle. The problem is, they will change your mind, and get the ball rolling, but it doesn’t give me that bang bam pow amazing feeling that I’d like to get. I don’t get a step-by-step guide or anything. I get a lot of theorycrafting and thoughts about how I should change my perspective on life. While that’s all good and well, when it doesn’t tie into a practical application/activity/do-able, I’m left alone with no ambition and a bunch of bound paper.

So, what I’d like to do is eventually create a nicely formatted strategy with a step-by-step on how to change your life, right now. Hopefully all the theory crafting will be easily understood and perfectly mixed in with the step-by-step to help the person reading it understand the ideas best. My aim is to fill the gap that I’ve so often seen in “self-help” anything. This is one of my goals underneath my top level goal. But first, I have to pass my own test to see if the method holds any water. Don’t you love it when people eat their own words before feeding it to others? Heh.

In the end, I have the highest faith in our abilities as humans.