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.”

(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.

• creating a working outline of strategies for life, goals, and things along those lines
• eventually writing a book, digging further into some of the items featured in the outline
• vlogging, or video blogging
• figuring out how, exactly, I’d like to use the forums. one idea I’ve seen, to avoid spam, is to keep comments on forums instead of on the blog but … again, I’m looking into that
• something having to do with affirmations – I know exactly what I want, just haven’t tied the potential ends to getting the ball rolling yet
• the idea of only blogging about updates to the site and updates to the outline, where the outline would then be the center piece of this site

Eventually, I’ll have added more content to the site that should benefit us all! Once I do  add new stuff, you’ll hear about it on my blog, of course.

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

I’ve been messing with the site all day. I’ve been implementing additional features to the site like forums and such that share databases with my wordpress database so users only have to sign in once to use all the features on the site. Though you wont see the forums link up on the site today, it’s there and will be available down the line after the blog matures a bit. If you read my twitter, you’ll understand how fitting the comic is.

One more thing that I’d like to do today is separate the “site news” posts into a separate page so they wont be mixed in with the blog. It seems fitting since they’re not really “blog posts” but just updates to keep readers in the know as to what’s going on on my side.

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.

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)

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.

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

“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:

Have you ever seen a person die? Do you remember the moment where life seemed to be stolen, or taken back, from the person? Can you imagine witnessing such a moment, feeling that sharp stab to your chest, breaking your entire concept of life as you normally see it, bringing an abrupt awareness to what death is? Let me share my experience with you.

I watched a person die. It made me realize how short this seemingly lengthy series of events, which we call life, really is. Watching that person die, gasping and reaching out and even fighting for life, bore new unexpected feelings into my being. I watched … as those around stood there, just watching … with a sympathetic gaze; we could not help this person though we all wanted to. Death that day was not graceful, was not gentle, was not sudden or sympathetic. After the person had died, I reacted with the feeling that life was being stolen, robbed, taken from this person. I felt more angry than sad that this was happening. This was unfair. That feeling stood next to me for quite awhile, holding my hand, justifying my held back tears and muffled emotion. How awful, for a human being full of life and consciousness to meet their end so bluntly, like an emotionless cause and effect, and in a way that is not beautiful but is painful and teeming with agony.

We are similar to the butterfly that I saw today. The control over when and how we’re born and die is pretty much out of our hands.

I’ve learned some things from the event in the hospital. I have learned is that we should not expect to live for any self-predetermined amount of time. Every good and bad person, every one loved and hated, every religious and non-religious, every man woman and child should expect to die an agonizing and painful death at any moment.

The pain of dying will hurt for a time. You may scream, cry, kick, squirm, and shake. Accept that it will hurt a lot; know that it will not last forever and will pass. Get comfortable with the understanding of the pain involved in death; embrace it, accept it, expect it so that you will not fear it. The pain will not last forever, but our natural course is to live and then die.

I’ve also learned about is the sadness of losing a friend or a family member. The one thought, more than anything else, which shakes the center of my being is Were they ready to die? If the answer to that question were a consistent YES, then I would miss the person but be happy for them, knowing that they were ready. If the answer were to be NO, the feelings that could arise from that, hurt deeper than anything I know. There is a great pain in knowing or even assuming that your loved one or your friend had life taken violently from them when they were not ready.

But this side of the life spectrum, you will never know for certain whether or not another person was ready for death. We know that death can hurt, but the pain you might see on someone’s face when they are dying is no indication of whether or not they were ready for death. I can be mentally ready to take a bullet in the arm, but if I hadn’t told you that before hand, the pain on my face wont tell you one way or the other; such is death. The person who I saw die was gasping for breath, choking and reaching their hands out for life, but even from that I can’t say whether or not that person was ready for death. You see, death is usually a painful endeavor which no one naturally wants to go through. It hurts, and our body reacts, but the bodies reaction to pain is all science and can’t tell us for a fact if one person or another was ready for death in the moment that they died.

Looking at someone’s life history also will not tell you if a person was ready for death when they died. Physical actions do not prepare you for death, nor will a history of physical actions determine whether or not someone was prepared for death. Preparing for death is something that happens in your mind initially and has the potential to give birth to actions from there. For any definite answer to the question of whether or not someone was ready for death, you’d have to dig around into that persons mind to find the answers.

Knowing that I can not know brings me comfort, as well as understanding. From that, I understand that we are independent beings and should, for our own well being, recognize that we are independent beings. If we fall for the idea that we were dependent on each other, having a loved one pass away would then mean that a part of you has died. Don’t fall for that idea. Although you may feel like a part of you has died when a loved one passed away, your level of understanding and your acknowledgement that we are separate beings will bring you comfort.

That is why you and I have to let go of each other. Though we’re all friends and family, we need to understand that we do not control each other and we are really separate beings –that is, your consciousness does not belong to someone else, and no one else’s consciousness belongs to you.

Once you have let go of the fear of death and the fear of others dying, you have done something great for yourself. You have prepared yourself for the inevitable. Now, you no longer run from death and no longer hide from it.

After all of the fear is gone for your own death and the death of others, what’s left? The answer is a beautiful series of precious moments which we call life where we influence one another. Accepting death brings a completely new flavor to life and the actions you take. Your goals, ambitions, life’s purpose, and future happenings should all take a moment to consider the idea that death is where they’re headed.

Take a look at your goals for a second, if you’ve got them handy. What are your goals? For any one of your goals, ask the question “Why?” and then ask yourself “Would I die for this goal?”. Would I die for this goal. That’s a big question and it’s also probably one of the most important ones you should ask yourself.

It’s important to factor death into your goals because whatever it is that you desire, do, think, or [you name it] is going to be the same thing you’re doing, thinking, or [you name it] when you die. Would you be ok with being caught dead doing what you’re doing, thinking what you’re thinking, or [you name it]?

Lets say your top-level goal is to become a millionaire. If that’s your goal, ask yourself why and then ask yourself if you would die for that goal. Are you really willing to die in pursuit of that goal specifically? This is an entirely personal question that you would have to answer for yourself.

Lets look at your goals from another perspective: If a doctor told you that you have one week to live, would would your goals be the same? If not, why then wouldn’t your goals look the same? The only difference between having one week to live, and expecting to live for ninety years, is time. So would your goals change because you don’t have enough time? Let me tell you right now that, on this side of life, you will never have “enough time”, ever; just think about it, you could die before you get to the end of this post.

The point is this: When aiming for a long distance goal, it’s in your best interest to consider whether or not the pursuit of said goal is something which you would die for. After all, you may never reach your goal, but you will have this moment, right now and nothing else.

Understanding that brings about a richer experience to life and your interactions with those around you. The words you say to others no longer leave your lips without pleasure but instead tingle your tongue. The moments you spend with others become colorful and vibrant like the butterfly. Listening to another persons experience is now an enjoyable intimacy to be savored. No longer tedious, are the things which you do; they are now soul enriching and bring a rewarding sense of purpose to your every movement.

Imagine what kind of amazing things you could do if you did things that you were willing to be caught dead doing – what would happen if you did things that you were willing to die for? You’d be a fearless warrior! In addition to that, if you will start to do what you will die for, you will start to see a frenzied increase of excessive passion for what you do in this life.

This sort of passion is the strongest I know.

Today, some time after I read the previously mentioned article, I thought, yeah, you have to be the change to see the change. And then I remembered that last night, I stayed up way too late watching a movie about Gandhi. Later on during the day I thought, yah know what, the best example of that phrase that I can imagine is Gandhi. Then, I decided to google up the phrase "you have to be the change", and the first result that popped up was about Gandhi – "You have to be the change that you want to see in the world," sayeth Gandhi. I don’t remember hearing that quote during the movie, although I was on an old ibm tablet that has really bad sound.

At any rate, that little coincidence was helpful for me because it brought a perfect picture to the idea of being the change. Here’s a clip from the movie just incase you haven’t yet seen it (note – music was added to this clip):

Gandhi, who was a lawyer before he became the "Father of The Nation [of India]", completely changed his life to see that same change in the world. He went from a suit to a loincloth, on purpose. He did this in pursuit of his end goal which was to liberate India. In doing that, Gandhi achieved something even greater. He influenced nations! I bet he didn’t know that he was one of Martin Luther King’s heroes. "Christ gave us the goals and Mahatma Gandhi the tactics." Martin Luther King said that in 1953, and we all know the difference that Mr. King made in America.

Be The Change For Yourself

Knowing that we have to be the change to see the change, we also need to realize that we have to be the change for ourselves and not just for others. Although we may see the desired change in our mind, we have to bring that foresight to the playing field of life and be the change. Only then will we see the change materialized as opposed to just seeing it in our minds.

My favorite quote for the aforementioned article is “To live a different life requires that you become a different person.” That speaks volumes. The emphasis there is that you have to change.

You have to change the way you think, the way you act, the food you eat, the clothes you buy, the words that come out of your mouth, the books you read, the way you look at the world, the music you listen to – it call comes down to your end goal, which determines what, if anything, will need to change in order for you to reach it.

Think of the you in the present and then think of the you in the future. What’s different then, in the future, compared to now? If you can answer that, you know what needs to change.

Change Things Around You

A quick way to get the ball rolling is to change your environment, to assist you towards the future rather than hold you back. If you keep doing the same things you’re doing now, reading the same books you read now, watching the same movies you watch now, dressing the same way you do now, thinking the same way you do now, acting the same way you do now, carrying yourself the same way you do now, guess what. You’re going to be the same person you are now.

I remember reading The Teenagers Guide to The Real World awhile back –what a great book. There’s a chapter in there which talks about wearing a suit as a college student. This chapter is a great example of how changing your environment around you, even just changing the types of clothes that you wear, can have a huge effect on how you see yourself, how you feel, and how others see you. Here’s an excerpt from the book:

Buy a good, conservative suit. That means a darker color like charcoal or dark blue. Get a nice shirt, a nice tie and nice, shineable shoes. Now wear this outfit all the time, every day, everywhere you go, for a month. I am not kidding. It will take you a week at least to feel comfortable in it. It will take another week for you to forget you have it on. Your friends will harass you mercilessly for a period of time as well. Ignore them. Tell them you are trying an experiment. During the third and fourth week, after you and everyone around you have settled down, watch the difference a suit makes in how people treat you and how you feel. It will be subtle, but you will notice it. You will find that people you know, especially adults, treat you differently. You will find that strangers treat you differently as well. They treat you with a different level of respect. You will find that a suit also changes what you say and how you act. It is very surprising.

If you were to wear a suit everyday for a month, how would YOU feel? You might feel richer. Is that how you’d like to feel? How would YOUR friends react? Maybe your friends would start to look at you differently. But, that’s ok, you’re changing. Don’t let your friends of the previous you hold the future you back.

What can you do now to change and get that much closer to your goals? Go ahead, pull out the pen and paper and list out your ideas. Maybe you need to change your habits or make new ones? Maybe you just need to change your hairstyle? It’s definitely worth your time to identify things in your life that can be changed in order to bring you closer to your goals.

We’ve All Been There

Have you ever talked to a person who was adamant in saying that there was no chance that they would be able to accomplish a particular goal or do a particular thing? I have. In fact, I was once that person myself. I remember telling myself, back when I was in high school, that “It would be nearly impossible to become awesome at soccer” – I had only known that the sport existed for about a year. Back when I wanted to start my own webpage, something which seemed like an awesome thing to do, I would think to myself, how in the world am I going to learn html -I was a teenager at the time. Or, back when I started college, I would think to myself how in the world am I ever going to be able to afford to live without my parents right after I graduate. Even now, with my latest ambition, at the ripe old age of 24, I’ve thought to myself starting an online business is an unreachable dream for me, I just don’t know how.

The lesson that I’ve learned from my past is that if I want it enough and can convince myself to repeatedly dedicate effort, I’ll get there – I’ve reached all those previous goals except the one about starting an online business. The problem was deciding to try and debating whether or not it was even a good idea to attempt reaching the goal given the looming uncertainty. That was then. Now that I’ve grown up and learned a little bit more, I know that if I’m to set out for a goal, uncertainty is not really something that gets to me; all I think about is the win, and the next task. But there’s one thing, applicable to this, that I remember my dad telling me as a kid and an almost-adult: He said “You’re afraid of success.”

Afraid of success? That. Makes. No. Sense. At the time, what my dad had told me made completely no sense at all to my being. I wanted success, I wanted to win; surely I was not afraid of success – how dare he say that to me.

For awhile, I brushed the idea aside as I didn’t understand it and blamed my misunderstanding of the idea on my dads, then offensive, matter-of-fact delivery of advice. No big deal, I know that when I finally do choose a goal, I’m all in. Yeah – yeah right, boy was I wrong.

It’s rare that a goal is all roses. Success requires change, and change has both positive and negative consequences.

Fear of Success: What will happen if you succeed?

Take A Long Hard Look

One day I decided to take a long hard look at my past accomplishments and try and figure out why they weren’t as amazing as I would’ve liked to have remembered. I tried to pick apart why I got medals in soccer for state games but never went on to play in college. I tried to figure out why I had the highest GPA only one for one year during high school. I tried to figure out why I stopped at html and didn’t continue on to css and other languages. All I did was ask the question why. From there, I gave myself some time to think about the answers.

It’s not trendy to acknowledge the negatives that might eventuate from success. We’re supposed to assume that all change will be positive. But unless we can prepare ourselves for a realistic picture of success we will push it away from ourselves.

Overcoming Fear of Success to Achieve Your Goals

I wasn’t scared to succeed at all! I was, though, very afraid of the change that I’d have to go through in order to succeed as well as the change I’d have to live with after I succeeded; the time I would have to put in, the dedication I would need, the change in how other people saw me, the potential that I might not be able to hang out with friends when I wanted, the uncertainty of not going by-the-book, the potential for other goals to fall by the wayside, the idea that I wouldn’t be using my college degree for anything related to the field I studied in, the fear that I’d have no time to pursue the opposite sex, the thought that I’d begin to break old promises I’d made, the -well, there were a lot of rocks uncovered when I finally took the time to investigate my shortcomings.

So I learned that it’s not really a fear of succeeding, it’s a fear of what might happen when you do succeed: that is what “fear of success” is.

Success is also frightening because success carries chaos with it. We call success Light Chaos.  But in your world, you’re geared and conditioned to have no chaos at all.  It’s an outgrowth of adolescence where life is so absolutely, unbelievably chaotic that you try to stabilize it with the absolutes — the always’s [sic] and never’s, the black’s and white’s — of adolescence.

Working with Fear of Success

It’s an attachment to repeating patterns in your life – a fear of change. In other words, you could call it an addiction.

Missing Passion

Now we both understand what the fear of success is. But lets not short change ourselves, this is a bigger issue than I’d previously thought, and if you’re still reading this maybe you can relate. Have you ever been so ALMOST passionate about something? I have. I have ALMOST been the most passionate person I can imagine on a board with four wheels (skateboard). I have ALMOST been so passionate about – you get the idea.

This “fear of success” business can not only circumvent a possible end goal, but it can also dampen your desire for a goal you currently have; It doesn’t just stop you from starting, it can even prevent you from reaching a goal that you’ve managed to start and progress towards. Even though you have a goal clearly set in your mind, so much that you can see it now –you might even be working towards it now- there’s a likelihood that there are several road blocking fears preventing you from reaching a deep burning passion that you might otherwise be oblivious of. Do you really want to miss out on something so powerful that can drive you to your goals?

Without the knowledge of the potential for fears to hang out and camp your ambitions, you might brush your lack of drive off as something insignificant that’ll pass by the time you wake up in the morning, like a minor setback. No, unless you resolve these issues now, they will remain in you and will be on the lookout for opportunities to trip you up. If you understand that, you know that doing away with the fear of success is very important. So important, in fact, that it’s in your best interest to take a time out and resolve your fears after you finish reading this (or as soon as possible).

Don’t Let The Fear Hang Around

Fortunately, identifying the fear is to win half the battle. That process basically involves indentifying all the hidden ways that success (achieving that goal) could negatively impact you. That means taking out a pen and a pad, text editor, flow diagram or whatever, and listing out all the potential negatives that you hadn’t previously took the time to pull out of your subconscious.

Once you’ve unmasked the fears, don’t feel satisfied and let them sit there – no, the longer you wait to come to terms with your fears, the longer those fears will stick around. You have to make it a priority to not only identify the fear, but also come to terms with whatever the fear is.

Maybe for you, once the fear is identified, the solution is obvious. Maybe it’s only a matter of doing a “negative thought brainstorm” as I’d mentioned in this post. Maybe the negative effects resulting from reaching the goal outweigh the positive; in which case it might be in your best interest to do away with the goal altogether – but isn’t it better to know that now, rather than investing so much of your time and energy to something you’ll end up tossing anyway?

Maybe your fears are completely unjustified and you actually have nothing to fear. Here’s an example: If I show up for this award ceremony, I wont be able to watch that documentary tonight. So your fear is not being able to watch the documentary? Maybe you can reframe and redesign your view of how you see your end goal: If I show up for this award ceremony, I’ll only miss 5 minutes of the documentary. There’s a lot of things you can do to redesign how you see your goal. Putting the fear out there in the first place helps you gain a whole new perspective on the fear itself. Now it’s in your conscious thoughts and you can appropriately deal with it: I’ll make it to the ceremony, and skip the opening credits, and I’ll watch the entire documentary when I get home, I might even be early.

At the end of all this, the strategy here is to know to identify the fears –all of them- and then decide what, if anything, to do with the fears that stand between you and your goal. If you decide to dump the goal, so what. If you decide to pursue the goal, come to terms with all of the fears even if you have to do it more than once. Coming to terms with your fears can do wonders for your goals.

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.

1. Predicting – Target Practice:

Goals:

Goals, by definition, are supposed to stand out. If I review my goals regularly or even semi regularly, the whole idea of reviewing the goal helps to remind myself to keep it a priority in my thoughts. Setting the goal in the first place is the first step. I already know to see the goal as if I’m already there, I can see the start and the end, and I know to work towards the goal automatically while feeling as if I’ve accomplished it already and am living the goal. It’s like the whole “monkey see, monkey do” thing; or maybe the “you are what you think about” or whatever phrase you can come up with.

Looking Back At The Future:

Previously I made a post about this where I said:

One day I sat down and starting writing a journal entry, documenting how my day went and how great a time I was having in my current position. The catch there is that all of this stuff had yet to actually happen. I wasn’t working for the type of company I was writing about, I didn’t do the types of things that I was writing about, and so on. But, I wrote that journal entry down as if I had just got home from the job that I wanted and had done all those things that day. Doing this created the feelings I wanted to feel, the images I wanted to see, and brought my goal closer to me.

It works just like that. You write a review, journal entry, whatever, just as if you had just achieved your goal. You’re writing about how great it feels to have done this and that, and you’re getting into as much detail as you’d like. This little review might take up a couple of pages because it’s very enjoyable to succeed and feel like a winner, so have fun with this one.

2. Morning Prep:

When you wake up for the day, do you normally think about what you’d like to do during that day? Maybe you write out a to-do list, maybe you just visualize your goals or something along those lines. This is a good way to get our thoughts pointing in the right direction right off the bat. If you do NOT do this and start out the day anyway, you might miss a large portion of time where your subconscious could be helping move your focus to your goals.

It’s like when you never notice a certain type of car driving down the road very often until you start to look for it; you’re focus wasn’t there, so your subconscious never helped you notice it.

If you’re the to-do list type, and you get your daily focus from a list, it’s important to remember to do the right things, not everything. For instance, if you see yourself doing 50 items on your to-do list, and none of those items are bringing you any closer to your goals, then you might have just wasted your time. On the other hand, if you do three things today and all three of those things pushed you closer to your goal, you might gather that you’re using your time wisely.

3. Controlling Your Thoughts:

Feelings Check:

If you feel bad, a negative thought probably slipped by your tracking system. One you realize how you feel, you can take a time-out and feed yourself some healthy thoughts and bring your feeling back up to feeling positive. There are lots of ways that you could do this. You might try affirmations, meditation, or even just plain old fashion good music. If you’ve got an army of positive thinkers nearby (lucky you), you could use them. If you’re into NLP and have some positive anchors setup, you could use that.

Nip Negative Thoughts In The Bud

Just the moment when you have a negative thought, you all it out and refute it. Here’s a brief example. Negative thought: I can’t win — reaction: I can and will win – pushing farther: [take a moment to feel like you have already won and you’re living out your goal right now].

Negative Thought Brainstorm

A good opportunity to do this is when you check and notice that your feeling compass is pointing in the wrong direction. Think up all your negative thoughts again and write them down as you remember them. After you’ve written them down, just underneath them, write the adjusted positive thought you would like. This works, and is suggested, because it’s easier to manage big, ugly, shadowy negative thoughts when you put a clear face on them (text). Writing them down unmasks all the shadows and makes the thought more manageable so that you can immediately fix it. This process is like breaking an addictive negative though. Here’s how I usually writ it out:

negative thought: I’m afraid that I wont finish updating the drawings on Monday and I’ll be fired for not completing them in the time allotted.

positive replacement: I will finish the drawings on Monday. I’ve already done most of the hard work anyways, which was identifying what needed to be fixed.

4. Reflecting

Daily reflections help a lot. They help me remember the thoughts that I accepted consciously or blindly throughout the day and remind me where and how those thoughts led me. From there I an change how those past thoughts influence my future ones.

For this part, you could type out on a personal blog, write out a private journal entry, talk to your spouse about the day, chat about the day with a few people from your elite mind group, but the focus should really be reviewing your day, re-discovering all the things that went right, redefining and fixing all the things that went wrong, learning for the future, and feeling thankful for the opportunity. Yah know, all that great kind of stuff.

Physical Activity Is Not Where It’s At

In my experience, actions in and of themselves do not really help push my positive thoughts much. However, positive and negative thoughts do occur during and around actions at those glancing moments where I’m not completely focused on what I’m doing. If you have reached a state where you can consistently and constantly focus on the present action, you are a Zen master. Focusing on the physical activity at hand, without being distracted, is a pleasurable or painful experience and most of us have at least experienced it and know this.

It’s like when someone kicks you in the knee; the before, after, and surrounding thoughts that are reactions to the moment mean nothing in the face of the present where you felt the shock/pain to your knee. In the scheme of positive thinking, though, I can’t say that I’ve ever had a single isolated physical action in and of itself that’s pushed my thinking towards or away from a positive or negative outlook. Physical activity seems like something of a discovery process that we do, and that’s about it.

As I mentioned, where thought comes into play is before and around and after the physical action. Those thoughts are like re-actions that one might choose to have when looking through their own looking glass.

The intrinsic vibrational pattern at the atomic level in all matter. The smallest unit of energy. Its basis is the energy of human consciousness.

Hado, in Japanese basically means “wave”. Here’s a small article that explains hado a little further. And if you check out the hado website, you can read all about how Dr. Emoto does his experiments with water crystals.

This is not just any crystallized [sic] molecule of water however. What has put Dr. Emoto at the forefront of the Hado phenomenon is his proof that thoughts and feelings affect PHYSICAL reality. By producing different Hado through written and spoken words, as well as music and literally presenting it to the SAME water samples, the water appears to "change its expression".

After checking out the site, you’ll notice that Dr. Emoto has a deep focus on water, but don’t let that knock you. The idea of proving that thoughts, words, and sounds can change or influence matter is still intriguing; my favorite quote from the site is “thoughts and feelings affect PHYSICAL reality”. You’ve probably heard that before, but have you ever seen someone doing homebrew science experiments to prove it? This hado stuff has driven a lot of interest towards the whole scientific aspect of affirmations, positive thinking, intentions, and other related topics.

On the hado website you’ll see examples of a few cheap science experiments done just to see how thoughts and feelings can affect physical reality. But after reading all of the tidbits of information on the hado website, my attention keeps going back to the rice experiment that was mentioned here. This experiment involved saying “thank you” to one jar of rice and “you fool” to the other jar of rice. After a month of talking to rice, the results look like this:

Such results seem to imply that, for one reason or another, a harsh and negative comment just might turn your rice into a dark and gloomy pile of rot.

Regardless of whether or not this is complete nonsense, the best part about an experiment like that is that you can do it yourself, in your leisure, without any special equipment or anything. A couple of jars and some cooked rice? I’m sure a lot people can swing that.

If you’re looking for a stupid easy science project that’s kind of related to the whole positive thinking thing, this might be the experiment for you. If you surf around for “hado” on youtube, you can find a lot of videos of people doing their own rice experiments. Here’s one example:

A Short Story

Some time (5+ years) ago, I went to visit a few friends in Houston and as I was walking around their place, I noticed that they had lots and lots of books – like, everywhere. That was cool. I also noticed they had lots of pictures of their friends scattered about the house, and lots of neat ’stuff’ scattered around. The ’stuff’ mostly looked like incomplete science projects, artsy things, and crafts. That was cool. Walking around in there, I got the feeling that I was touring the house of geniuses – the house was cluttered and messy with all kinds of knowledge and interesting things. But out of all the interesting stuff in their house, there was one item that stood out and made a unique impression on my mind. It was a poster.

The interesting thing about the poster, other than the image on it, was the location. This poster was mounted on the ceiling right above their bed. It was a poster with an image of the cockpit of the space shuttle – the picture was taken so that you could feel like you were the person driving the shuttle. I can’t recall exactly what she said, but the friend responsible for the poster told me that one of her dreams was to be/do [something space related]. That was years ago, but I remember thinking how great of an idea it was that she put her goal right there on her wall above her bed so she could see it right before she fell asleep and right after she would wake up in the morning. I can imagine her lying in bed looking up at that poster on her ceiling and visualizing herself driving the shuttle. What a cool way to keep your head in the clouds.

The poster on the ceiling is an awesome idea, and things seemed to work out for my friend –she works for NASA now- but what if you can’t find a poster that reflects your goal/vision/dream? What if there’s no poster out there that has a picture of you running through the finish line after a long marathon? What if there’s no picture of you building that hot rod? What if there’s no picture of you smoking cigars on the back porch with Obama? Well, the obvious thing to do is to make one or have one made.

If all of that sounds great to you but you’re hung up on finding an artist to make the artwork, you could simply head over to craigslist and post an ad with what you want. Or, if you live near a place with street artists, you could roll on down to their neck of the woods and pay them to do your future portrait. If you already know an artist or have a friend who does portraits, you could pay them to do it.

Visualizing Gone Awesome

Let’s say your goal is to be a competitive whitewater racer. Now, imagine staring at a picture of you achieving your goal. The picture is sitting at a strategic location in your home/apartment/office. You see this picture everyday and sometimes you sit there and just stare at it, daydreaming and basking in the warm feelings you get while thinking about it. You wake up in the morning and start out your day with focus and drive after looking at your face and your body burning through the rapids.

Compelling.

A Little Bit of History

Not too long ago, I worked for a company doing something entirely different than what I do now. I was that guy behind the 800 number that you had to talk to if your server went down or your mysql database somehow broke. I was level one tech support for a web hosting company. Did I love my job? Contrary to what one might hear from most tech support guys who burn out, I was so fresh and new to the whole thing that I had no reason to do anything but enjoy the fast paced and exciting job experience. I learned a lot very quickly, I enjoyed spending time with the coworkers, I felt that I was progressing daily in expertise – I was pretty upbeat about everything that I was doing there, the only downside to that job was that I made juuuust enough to pay the bills at my cheap apartment.

As my family began to grow, my current job was no longer a sufficient means to keep me satisfied. To sum it up, I wanted to make more money. Something just had to change. What was previously working just fine for me quickly became a roadblock for my future plans. This is the point where I began to change my thoughts to reflect my ambition and desires. I began to imagine myself in a different field of work that was directly related to the four year degree I held which had yet to get me a job. I’ll save you the suspense and just say that I landed a position which fit my proposed criteria. But I’ll rewind a bit and tell you how I got there.

Starting The Change

Out of all the things that I did to make the transition from my previous job to my current one, the thing that stood out like a sore thumb was upthinking/future-blogging, or whatever you want to call it. If the name doesn’t give it away, let me describe to you exactly what I did.

One day I sat down and starting writing a journal entry, documenting how my day went and how great a time I was having in my current position. The catch there is that all of this stuff had yet to actually happen. I wasn’t working for the type of company I was writing about, I didn’t do the types of things that I was writing about, and so on. But, I wrote that journal entry down as if I had just got home from the job that I wanted and had done all those things that day. Doing this created the feelings I wanted to feel, the images I wanted to see, and brought my goal closer to me.

Fast forward again to the conversation I was having with my buddy who’s applying for a new job at his current company- while I was talking to him, I remembered those things I’d written down, those feelings I’d had; I remembered feeling like what I was doing was against all normal reason and that I knew it was going to work even though it was kind of strange. I remember hesitating to write about the future at first, thinking it would feel silly, but then embracing the idea and diving in.

Then, I remembered that I still had the journal entry in a notebook or file somewhere. So after a good amount of searching, I found it. To my surprise, what I had written almost exactly reflects, right down to the amount of monitors on my desk and the workload that I have, what I am doing right now at my current job.

Spooky huh?

Don’t Knock It ‘til You Try It

When you read the books, and you hear people talking about it, the whole idea of upthinking, as I’d like to call it, or visualizing, or positive thinking – it all seems like a bunch of hand waving at first until you try it and SUCCEED. But it’s not by positive thinking alone that you get to your end goals, but changing your mind is the first step if you’re in a pool of negative thought. It’s those first inspired thoughts which can change the entire direction of your future for the better and that’s why it’s important to think those thoughts.

I’m glad that I went ahead and decided to write that journal entry. That was such a rewarding experience; it was worth every minute and every ounce of thought I’d put into it. Have you ever done anything like that? If not, try it out!

If you’ve got a word processor open, or you’ve got a notepad handy, go ahead and do a little bit of upthinking yourself. Try it on and write out a journal entry, reviewing your day, from the future that you’d prefer.

I have a passion for helping others reach their goals and a strong interest in the full circle of going from an initial idea to watching that idea materialize. I do like to do other things as well; I like messing with gadgets, playing video games, and having a good time, but most of those things don’t give me that feel good warmth in the base of my soul. I want that feel good; I want to help others.

Another thing that I’d like to do is start a business built around the idea of helping others reach their goals and dreams. I’d like to not only do what gives me that warm feeling, but also pay the bills doing it as well. Of course, even though I’d like to start a business around the idea of helping others, I have no idea how to do that. The only thing I could previously think of as a starting point was to look up how to start a business on the cheap. As you can imagine, all kinds of articles came up but a few of them caught my interest. Out of those articles, nothing really hit the spot for me. Much later I incidentally ran across this article which talked about launching your business with a blog. That article hit the spot for me, and was part of the motivation to start this particular blog.

As of right now, I have a day job where I do some 3d design, roll around in Microsoft office a bit, run a few numbers through a calculator every now and then, and have a good laugh-fest with my co-workers. I like my job, and it doesn’t give me that warm feel good feeling I get from knowing that I had a hand/finger/influence in helping someone along the path to their dreams/goals/whichever. Occasionally I get to watch my attitude rub off on others, but at my day job, it’s not really something I’m focusing on. In other words, I’m not really in the mix as I’d like to be. That’s why I created this site! Now, I can keep my day job and have a really awesome and fulfilling business on the side.

With this blog, I want to focus less on talking about gadgets I have/want, memory tricks, how my day at work was, random ramblings, what I think about the weather, and focus more on positive thinking, setting and reaching goals, uplifting stories, and the like – basically I would like this blog to function as a resource for uplifting and tid-bits of encouragement along with some advice/tips/tricks along the way. This, in itself, is something that I like to do anyway person-to-person so I think this will blog will ultimately be a win-win for anyone interested.

The purpose of this blog is to help myself and others keep our heads in the clouds where our goals, ambitions, ideals, and visions are clearest; and to provide uplifting and encouraging thoughts, ideas, stories, videos, and the like.