Update: New Theme And Other Changes

If you have seen the front end of the upthinker blog before, you’ll notice that the theme has since been changed. I did this because someone informed me that the previous theme, while “good enough”, wasn’t quite contained and neat looking. It was also missing a lot of color. So, after lots of searching around, I settled on this theme because it had the happy colors and looked very neat and contained. I did modify the theme a bit though; I made the top image and links all fixed because I think that looks kind of cool and works out better for those who want to skip across different pages on the site.

The homepage for upthinker.com was previously just a bluehost login, and then a placeholder that said “under construction”, so I changed all that to make upthinker.com point you right towards a stagnant wordpress page of mine that states the purpose of the site. On the top right of the homepage, you’ll see that I’ve added a few other pages like Archives, About, and Contact. Those pages are now there but they’re not all complete just yet. I’ll fill these in with information as I go along. One of my concerns is that this site will eventually have more pages than what will be able to fit in the header image. At that point I’ll probably switch to another theme, suppress the unimportant page links in the header, or hack away at the current theme. We’ll see what happens.

Right now I’m still making little adjustments here and there so if you see things move around or disappear, you’ll know why.

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.

Who’s Influencing Who?

Previously on UpThinker, I talked about a slew of strategies/things/ideas/tricks which led to more controlled thinking – basically how we could influence our thinking. Right now I’d like to throw out a long-ish reminder on why we should monitor the things that influence us. Yah know, like tv.

Influencing What We Think About

So, what things can be done to further influence what we think about? That is the question. The reason behind finding out what an further influence what we think about is because what we primarily think about can determine how we feel and else effect the things that we do throughout the day and the decisions we make. I think we can all accept that as true without throwing around any counter-culture or mysticism or religion.

Whose Goals Are You Chasing

Lets say that you know what your goals are. Lets say that you have a passion for those goals. Lets even say that you have action items identified for those goals. Lets say all of those things and take another, closer, look at “what goes in”, your intake.

What do you watch on tv? Does what you watch on the television have anything at all to do with your goals? I remember a time where I would sit in front of the television all day long watching one show, then the next, then the next, and the next. That was in the summer between grades during high school. Nothing I was watching had anything whatsoever to do with any of my goals. Are you in that boat as well? I remember thinking to myself All this television watching is doing nothing for my goals, but I bet I’m helping out the television networks’ goal to reach a large amount of viewership.

Because I wasn’t chasing my own dream, I was unintentionally being used as a pawn to help someone else reach their dream. The words sound nice enough, but once you realize that you’re wasting YOUR time and energy, your life, it’s not so nice. You’re the gray matter who doesn’t pursue their own goals.

Everyone has the option of playing on their own chessboard. If you choose to play on your own chessboard, you get to manipulate the pieces back and forth. If you do NOT choose to play on your chessboard, you will become the pawn on someone else’s and they will manipulate you back and forth. How do you like that.

Television is just another medium with which to be influenced. There are plenty of others such as books, music, movies, jobs, friends, places, and the list goes on.

Take a look at what your intake looks like through all your mediums of being influenced, and see if your intake aligns with your goals. If it does not, change it. If it does align, go you!

What you have to realize here is that all of these forms of intake, all of the mediums through which you are influenced, all of these things can direct your thoughts in all kinds of directions. If you can narrow down your intake to suit your goals, your thoughts will also benefit. This idea also spills over into topic of positive and negative thinking.

What Goes In, Might Come Out

If you’re constantly taking in negative things on purpose, you’ll probably end up thinking negative things or maybe even doing negative things as a result of that. You might not even consciously try to think the negative stuff, but when you made a decision to intake the negative thing, you just planted a seed in your head.

With the negative thing hanging around up there, you can zap it in its tracks with some of the methods mentioned in this previous post, but why even place the negative seed in the first place? Instead, why not place positive seeds in your head.

Some examples of influence mediums can be movies, music, books, blogs, television, and friends. You can take control over some of the stuff you take in. Turn off the negative and turn on the positive. Tune out the things that don’t relate to your goals and tune into the things that do. Read the synopsis of a movie before you watch it to see whether or not you can get something positive or goal related out of it. Don’t constantly read blogs that having a strangely obvious negative spin to them or have nothing to do with your purpose. Listen to uplifting music rather than music that talks about thinking negatively.

You don’t think what you watch, read, and hear have any influence on you? Try raising children. Children will prove to you that the things you do will influence the things that the children do. If you stick your hand up your nose, little Susie is going to stick her hand up her nose.

Look at teenagers! A teenager see’s a pop star wearing a ring through their nose, now the teenager wants to put a ring through their own nose. Fifteen year old Johnny can’t wait to get those new air Jordan’s that he saw on the commercial. Young Betsy wants that new short skirt that the girl on Nickelodeon was wearing.

Look at adults! Mr. Johnson, typically a tame person, is encouraged by his peers to pull a prank on the boss. In another scenario, Dr. Rosette is swayed by a certain scientific text to change the way she conducts her science experiments.

It’s rampant I tell you! What goes in, might come out; we live in a world of influence! If you have a choice in the first place, do what you can to bring in the good stuff that matches up with your goals. This is why you have never heard of anyone buying a cd with negative affirmations on it – I don’t know anyone who has a goal to live an unproductive life. Who wants to hear things like “you suck at life, you’re a horrible person”? Over time, though initially put off by the idea, “you suck at life” starts to sneak into your everyday thinking and eventually those thoughts will be coming from your own brain.

Remember, pick and monitor your influences wisely

Keep Moving Forward

So Many Problems! – Computers

“Why did the computer turn off,” I asked myself. I’d only stepped into the bathroom for a second. After a good four hours of work at my day job, I was ready to get to reading and blogging. After pressing the start button on my tall black custom computer case, my screens started to flicker slightly, as they usually do when they figure out that I’m turning the computer on again, but this time nothing came up after the monitors turned on.

For a second I thought maybe something is unplugged, but when I finally decided to get down on the floor and tune my eyes to the components which I’d suspected, a horrible –HORRIBLE, I TELL YOU- stench took hold of my nostrils.

I had no idea what it was but I guessed it might be my mother board. A broken mother board would mean a lot of screws would have to be messed with to get this computer back in working order, not to mention a visit to the local computer store, and a nice gash into my bank account.

As it turns out, the problem was … well, the problem was my power supply. The power supply was smoking and filling my small apartment with an atrocious smell. After checking the rest of the components on the motherboard, I was confident that nothing else had been fried because of the bad psu (that’s short for power supply unit).

After a nice long visit to Fry’s electronics, I ended up with a new keyboard/mouse combo, and a new expensive power supply. In about no time, after disassembling the old and assembling the new, I was ready to press the power button again.

Unfortunately nothing happened on my screen after pressing the power supply, but all the computers components were on and running. The fans were spinning, everything seemed to be working, but nothing was coming up on the screen! What in the world could be the problem here?

Well, turns out that my big fat video card no longer wanted to be in it’s assigned space anymore –or, rather, wanted to move around a bit. After moving the video card around a few different slots and then finally back to it’s original assigned slot (it was a pci-e slot), I’d press the power button and my boot screen would show up! Hurray! But there’s more.

The boot screen would show up for about 5 seconds and then I’d get the infamous blue screen of death. What could be the problem now!?

So I googled around a bit, and found a few answers as to what the problem could be: apparently, windows vista is known to occasionally have an issue with nvidia video cards. But, the issue is so subtle, you wouldn’t know how to fix it unless someone had told you. In fact, it’s so … it’s not even worth mentioning. All that matters is that I did the fix, arrived at my boot screen again, and encountered a NEW “blue screen of death”.

This time, the blue screen said I have a memory problem. O really?

I was ready to give up a long time ago. But I persisted.

Having values of “forever” for some goals isn’t a matter of motivation.  Motivation is the urge to seek positive feedback.  Persistence is the ability to continue forward in the complete absence of any.

http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2008/07/09/how-to-measure-your-degree-of-persistence/

Memory problems. Ok, I’ve got four dimms (sticks) of ram in this thing, totaling eight gigabytes, so I’ll just take them all out and stick them all back in one by one until I find the problem. Well, I did that. One by one they all proved to be working.

After reinstalling the last stick of ram, guess what happened. The computer booted up into Windows 7 like nothing was ever wrong with it. This whole scene took five hours.

Cue today’s topic:

Keep Moving Forward

That’s my favorite quote at the moment. If you’re into animated films, “Keep Moving Forward” is part of a quote from Walt Disney, made popular by the animated movie called Meet The Robinsons. This movie tells a very entertaining story about persistence.

Here’s a clip from the film:

That’s not all. Just yesterday, I read a great post called Keep Showing Up. I watched the videos posted there (one of TED, one from Letterman) and enjoyed my stay at Joyful Days (cool blog). The topic there is on the same target as the topic of this post. But I can’t help but think what would’ve happened if the whole idea of persistence wasn’t fresh in my subconscious mind from what I’d read. Would I have given up on my computer? Who knows, but I do know that I’m glad I didn’t and I’m glad I read that post.

I’ve said this on a previous blog, and it still holds true today so I’ll say it again. “We have all had a problem at one time or another that kept us from getting from point A (current situation) to point B (goal). Of course we took some time to address that and figure out a solution. But why, even with our awesome plan, did we never reach that goal? I’ll tell you why. It’s because you gave up.”

You will fail many times but if you allow that to stop you from trying, you will miss out on the amazing feeling of success once you reach new heights with your accomplishments. Failure is a stepping stone to success.

http://zenhabits.net/2008/05/a-letter-to-my-son-on-starting-out-in-life/

Imagine what would happen if the people in this world who have accomplished great things would have just given up! No more light bulb. No cars. No space travel. No pretty white apple laptops. No civil rights. No freedom. You get the picture?

The difference between a person who reaches their amazing goals, and a person who doesn’t, is persistence. You do want to reach your amazing goals right? Me too.

When life throws you a blue screen of death, keep moving forward.

More videos please! Ok, coming right up: