Month: September 2013

  • Working hard does NOT equal success

    Yesterday I was on Facebook, and a very successful fellow entrepreneur posted something that shocked me. It was on a discussion of feelings of entitlement in society, and how many people have an undeserved “feeling of superiority” to their peers – especially in Gen Y.

    To paraphrase the response:

    I feel superior to my Gen Y counterparts because I work harder than they do. I have worked 100 hour weeks, consistently, and that’s what’s led to my success.

    It took me aback to have this otherwise very smart and successful entrepreneur espousing such a simplistic formula for “success.”

    I’ve seen plenty of entrepreneurs who “work 100 hour weeks” who don’t have anywhere near the kind of success this person has had in her business. I was one of them.  Back when I had my bike shop, I was driving myself into the ground, working 100+ hour weeks between my day job as a faculty member and the “side job” of running that bike shop.

    What happened when I did that?

    I made lots of poor decisions – decisions that cost us 10’s of thousands of dollars.

    I rushed into things, because I always felt “behind” and “hurried.” That made the bad decisions worse.

    I pressured employees and my business partner (who was also a family member). The relationship became strained and she became supremely unhappy with the business. She started self-sabotoging success, by making really bad choices.

    After doing all that, I eventually burned out. I just got sick of that way of being, and resented that bike shop for “doing it to me.” It wasn’t long after the resentment crept in that the business started going downhill – fast.

    That “hard work” wasn’t a recipe for success. It was a recipe for disaster. I still am paying off the loans from that failed bike shop (even though I’ve been very successful with my new business that was founded from the ashes of the bike shop).

    Look – if you just think that “hard work” is all it takes, then I suggest you go out and get a job digging ditches. There will be plenty of hard work for you – as much as you could possibly want.

    I’m not saying that entrepreneurs should never “work hard.”  There are times you’re going to have to do that. There are times in a business when you have to give birth to a new project – a campaign, a product, a book, or whatever. When you’re giving birth to something big, you will have to put in some long hours.

    But the key lies in what you do after you’ve given birth to that big thing. Do you relax and recuperate (like a mother does after giving birth to her baby?) Or do you jump right back in to hard work, thinking that if you don’t do that, then you’re going to fall behind?

    There’s a big difference between episodic “hard work” and chronic “hard work.”

    Episodic hard work – if directed with clarity and good decisions – can yield incredible fruits. (I’ve built a multi-multi-six figure business very quickly with that kind of work).

    Chronic hard work, while it may yield fruit short term, over the long term only yields stress, ill-health, and burnout.

    Do not follow the advice of those who would tell you that to succeed you must work 100 hour weeks (chronically). It’s counter productive.

    My own situation is proof: just contrast the failed bike shop where I regularly worked 100 hour weeks, versus my present business where the 100 hour weeks have only happened sporadically, followed by recovery periods.

    My present business is more fun, more successful, and having a greater impact on the world.

    All because I have a lot more clarity about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. That clarity doesn’t come from being overworked and overstressed.

    If you want more help – if you feel chronically overwhelmed, stressed, or exhausted – then I’ve got some good stuff coming to help you. I’ll be making a series of brand new videos on über-productivity for you. Just sign up for my newsletter (below) and I’ll let you know when they’re ready.

    ps – if you want to read a related blog post I wrote on this topic for scientists, you can check it out on my morganonscience.com blog. I have some specific pointers there that you should find immediately helpful.

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  • Who is that mysterious author?

    In my previous piece, I wrote about the nature of our identity…

    Included in that post were some deep quotes, but I didn’t name the author.

    I held that back for a reason.

    I didn’t want the complexity of the source to be confused with the message.

    Because that message is important.

    See, in the early 1960’s, there was a woman. She was a journalist. And one day, she got an idea: let me write an article on psychic phenomena.

    She set out with the notion of debunking the happenings of occult.

    So, one night, she and her husband sat down with a Ouija board, expecting nothing much to happen – but being at least a little bit open minded, in case something did.

    Well, let’s just say that something happened. That something was the “energy personality essence” that goes by the name of Seth. Seth wasn’t just a trivial fortune-teller or big-top show woman. In fact, Jane Roberts, the woman in question, actively avoided publicity as much as possible.

    Seth was eloquent. Seth wrote books, spoken through Jane. Not just little books – but big, meaty, complex books. They are the über-philosophy. After reading them, I can hardly go back to reading the mere human philosophers like Kant, Sartre, Nietzsche, Plato, and etc…. Those philosophies seem so small in comparison. Each may hold some truths, but they are just surface truths.

    Seth wrote books about the nature of reality. He wrote books about how our universe came to be. He wrote books about the process of evolution and creativity (BTW, he verifies my long-held suspicion that these are not independent processes).

    He did this for almost twenty years, until Jane’s death in 1984 silenced his voice.

    The pseudo-skeptics and Seth

    In the early days, Jane and her husband Rob were skeptical. They sought out multiple academics to assess and test the Seth phenomenon. They wanted to make sure that it wasn’t somehow just a manifestation of schizophrenia, or worse.

    They did a lot of tests of Seth’s ability to see well beyond what was in front of Jane and Rob’s immediate senses. They’d do test with hidden objects and drawings, where Seth would have to view the remote object and bring back information about it.

    Many of the tests were successful, some were not. Seth wasn’t perfect. But he was damn good.

    Yet, most of their attempts to engage academics in rigorous scientific examinations of the phenomenon ended badly.

    Why?

    Because in almost every  case, the academic in question brought a strong pre-supposition of falsity into the endeavor.

    Take for example, this:

    Not too long ago, a young psychology professor called and asked me to speak to his class at the local college…. The man’s attitude was apparent the minute he came in the door. Personally he wouldn’t touch a medium with a ten-foot pole, but since they did exist and he knew one, he felt duty-boudn to “expose” his students to the phenomenon.

    A lot of people, especially many scientists, like to think we are objective and unbiased. And yet all of science is driven by the questions we ask, and the data we choose to admit or exclude.

    In this fellow’s case, he started out with a firm disbelief in the phenomenon of Seth. He expressed that disbelief strongly to his students.

    So, when Jane offered to do a set of experiments where the students were to try to “remote view” a new drawing each day posted  inside Jane’s abode (where it couldn’t be seen from outside), the professor reluctantly “allowed” it for those students who wanted to try.

    Already he biased the experiment: he clearly let the class know that these kinds of experiments were beyond serious consideration.

    Given that background of strong negative belief by their professor, only five students took part.

    Those five students managed a decent track record; yet the professor dismissed the results as coincidence because of “the low number participating.”

    So here we have an experiment that has been dismissed before it got underway. There is no hope of an unbiased experiment under such circumstances.

    I wish that I could say that Jane and Rob’s experiences were unique. But they’re not.

    Like everyone, academics believe what they want to believe. They select narrow questions and data-collection activities to focus upon based on those beliefs. Science is no more open-minded than religion, or any other field.

    There’s a whole “skeptics” movement that has arisen to debunk anything that could be considered paranormal or as going beyond the materialist model.

    These people are not real skeptics. They are pseudo-skeptics. They adhere to a rigid dogmatic belief system that is just as narrow-minded as the most fundamentalist of religious practitioners do.

    However, standing in the way are groups of organized fundamentalists who call themselves “skeptics” but in reality know nothing about the true meaning of the word nor practice it. In fact, they’ve hijacked the word to mean its opposite.  Rather than inquiring, or asking questions to try to understand something, they seek to debunk, discredit and ridicule anything that doesn’t fit into their belief system. 

    That’s from the site http://www.debunkingskeptics.com.

    The question I ask you, dear reader, is this: are you a true skeptic, or a pseudo-skeptic?

    My own skepticism

    I have pursued the reading of the Seth books as an open-minded inquiry, with healthy but not overarching skepticism.

    I have constantly asked myself: are there valid alternative explanations for the source of this material?

    The only alternatives I’ve come up with are that either Jane was a brilliant faker, who in the process managed to tap into some very deep truths and some of the most important books of the last century; or

    Jane was a schizophrenic who had a personality that managed to do the same.

    Let’s consider the first alternative explanation. Does it make sense? Jane had her own writing career – she wrote several books under her own name, separately from Seth.

    As an author myself, I have to say that my Ego would way rather have credit for what I write under my own name than under the name of some other mysterious entity that I am “channeling.”  It seems like a strange way to get credit for your creative output.

    And, given the extent to which Rob went to great lengths to document all the circumstances of the Seth phenomenon, it seems like an awful lot of effort for questionable gain.  He produced shelves and shelves of notebooks that contained his transcriptions of all the sessions.

    Further – where’s the gain? Jane didn’t charge for readings or seminars. She did invite people to her home to experience Seth, but no money transfer was involved. Simply put, why would someone go to all that trouble for an elaborate fake of some of the best material ever created?

    The schizophrenic explanation is no better.  The idea that a whole separate, highly complex, very smart personality is there, sharing gray matter with this writer, is quite astounding in it’s own right.

    I haven’t found a more satisfying alternative hypothesis than to accept what they claim as substantially correct.  It doesn’t mean that there isn’t one, but just that I haven’t found it. Given that, I tend to believe it just as I would any other human author’s work. I consider it as having insights that I may be able to use and apply in my life; but I’m not going to just consume it as if it were gospel. It is not “perfect.”

    Why not perfect?

    There are occasional flaws and inconsistencies in the works of Seth. Does this invalidate the whole thing?

    Seth himself said that the “medium” has a strong influence on the message. They act like a translator at a very fundamental level – biasing what is said and how it is said by their own beliefs and feelings.

    That means that we would never hear “pure” Seth through Jane (or through anyone else). It’s like reading Tolstoy in English. You are not getting the “pure form” of the writing.

    For example, there are passages about the lost city of Atlantis (which Seth claims lies in our future), and also passages about other humanoids who’ve existed before us on our planet. Such speculations may be just as much a reflection of Jane’s interests as they are of Seth and his insights. It’s a blend. Because you can’t truly separate the medium from the message.

    However, the small imperfections aside, these books have some of the best explanations I’ve encountered for why we exist, and the nature of life.

    Of course, you’ve probably figured out by now that the quotes in the previous post were from Seth.

    Specifically, the quotes were from the book “The Seth Material” by Jane Roberts.

    What is at the core of the Seth material?

    There are a few main “take-home” principles:

    1. We create our own realities. No, really, we do! Through complex machinations that go far beyond the visible universe, what we experience is a direct reflection of what we are thinking and feeling. It is not a direct reflection of what we desire, because we often desire things that are in opposition to what we believe to be true.
    2. We are the process of “The Universe” or “God” discovering itself. Imagine an all-powerful, all-perfect God, by itself in the Universe. It would be lonely, and damn boring. So how did God solve this dilemma? By creating other entities a part of but apart from itself! We are the ongoing result of that process of those entities discovering who they are. We are here to discover and experience: not to work hard or to suffer or to atone for sins.
    3. We are fundamental to the ever-ongoing action of creation. There is no finished or “perfect” state here. That would be The End. We participate in it by creating. Each creation leads to an inspiration for the next creations. It is never ending. If it were to end, we’d be done for.

    There’s a lot more. But if you understand and live just these few, your life will be vastly enhanced.

     

  • Who are you? Just beans and franks? (and how to avoid writer's block!)

    One of man’s biggest quests throughout the ages has been to answer the seemingly simple question: “who am I?”

    The answer is not so simple. Or is it?

    We have on the one side the materialists who answer this question with the explanation that we are a “side effect.” In their view, we are a random byproduct of a random universe, kind of like the meat scraps that are swept off the floor then made into bologna or hot dogs. Or a bit like farts….a byproduct of attempting to digest certain kinds of foods like beans. Beans n Franks. That’s all we are. Thank you, Richard Dawkins, for such enlightenment.

    Then we have on the other side the fundamentalists, who answer this question with the explanation that we are a product of an all-knowing, “perfect” God.  We are here to “prove ourselves” to that God. God is perfect, we are far from it. Yet we are supposed to strive to that perfection. We are supposed to make up for the original sin, and all the sins thereafter. Wow, what a burden. I feel tired already.

    If you feel a bit dissatisfied with these two most common explanations of who we are, join the club. There’s an ever-growing cadre of thinking people who accept neither explanation as true, and who strives for a better, more satisfying explanation of existence.

    How about this one?

    An identity is .. a dimension of existence, action within action, and unfolding of action upon itself–and through this interweaving of action with itself, through this re-action, an identity is formed.

    I’ll tell you where that came from in just a bit. But first, let’s contemplate this statement. (I had to read and re-read the corresponding passages several times to really get it. Maybe you’re smarter than I am…)

    What this is saying is that our identity depends on action… the action and re-action of experience. Nothing more, nothing less.

    Think about that for a second. Are you anything more, or less, than the things that have happened to you throughout your experience (which includes the actions you’ve taken and the re-actions to those?)

    Identity is formed by the flow of actions throughout life. It’s the actions and reactions that define who we are.

    Now here’s an interesting passage:

    Once more, action is not a force from without that acts upon matter. Action is, instead, the inside vitality of the inner universe–it is the dilemma between inner vitality’s desire and impetus to completely materialize itself, and its inability to completely do so.

    Now, this is going to take a moment to explain. Say that, like me, you believe that thought precedes matter, not the other way around. (If you think that matter precedes thought, like the materialists, I’m afraid that this quote will never make sense to you, and you will likely remain philosophically lost, as I was for several decades of my life. Sorry about that.)

    So, let’s say we have an Apple. But, instead of biting into it, we’d like to share it evenly between two people. (Let’s say Adam and Eve want to share evenly in their sinning!). This inspires the possibility of a cutting device with which to cut that apple.

    Before biting into the apple, Adam, being the industrious fellow he is, goes off and fashions a crude knife out of a stone. He now has the first knife, which he uses to cut the apple.

    Aha… but after the apple cutting exercise, it quickly becomes apparent that this knife thing can be used for other purposes. It could be used to hunt… it could be used to shape other tools, like spears and arrows, it can be used to carve patterns, it can even be used to threaten Eve.

    This is action: the materialization of one idea… leads to many more ideas.

    Our ideas cannot completely materialize themselves, because to be “complete” would mean there’s not another idea. Yet each time we create something, it creates more ideas, not less. Action is the continual sequence of these creations, these ideas…

    Now, interestingly:

    Identity, because of its characteristics, will continually seek stability, while stability is impossible.

    Think about that. It’s true. Most of us define our lives by trying to find some kind of stability.

    And yet, if we really found complete stability, we would get absolutely and totally bored.

    We would be the Stepford Wives… squared. It’s a fine balance between these two, the desire for stability and the constant change, that creates consciousness….Here’s another quote:

    It is this dilemma, between identity’s constant attempts to maintain stability and action’s inherent drive for change, that results in the imbalance, the exquisite creative by-product that is consciousness of self.

    and further

    Consciousness, therefore, is not a “thing” in itself. It is a dimension of action, an almost miraculous state, made possible by what I choose to call a series of creative dilemmas.

    So consciousness is a state, coming from this fine imbalance between the desire for stability and the constant flow of action in the universe.

    Then what of Ego?

    Ego consciousness is a state resulting from the third creative dilemma, which happens when consciousness of self attempts to separate itself from the action.

    and

    Ego consciousness…involves a state in which consciousness of self attempts to divorce self from action – an attempt on the part of consciousness to perceive an action as an object … and to perceive action as initiated by the ego as a result, rather than as a cause, of ego’s own existence.

    Here we have this ego fellow, trying to be separate, distant, and aloof. Looking down upon all of the action, and saying: “look, I DID THAT. See how cool I really am??? (look Ma!!)”

    When it is the very fine balance of action and identity which is the root source of Ego in the first place.

    In other words, Ego is a false barrier. It is an attempt to make us separate from the action, better than the action. It’s not all bad, it’s just often misused.

    Here’s why.

    Let’s say that my Ego says “I am an author. And I am a damn good one at that. I just had a New York Times bestseller! Expectations for my next book are very high!”

    Now, as long as I am caught up in that ego, writing the next book is going to be fraught with challenges such as writer’s block.

    I am attempting to separate myself, artificially, from the identity which has been and is being created by the action of writing.

    If I can, instead, just BE the action of writing – i.e. let the sum of actions and reactions be my identity… then I am far more likely to succeed on my next writing endeavor than if I get all wrapped up in the ego of being a bestselling author.

    So here we have a very important, actionable piece of advice that comes from all the philosophical musings:

    Do not get wrapped up in ego. Get wrapped up in action.

    (That is my own quote, it’s not from the book I’ve been referring to).

    Having studied and written a bunch about creativity, this is one of the great secrets. Creativity is a flow, and the more that ego is happening, the more that the flow gets blocked.

    The flow of creativity is a series of actions. It’s making ideas real… either as words on the page, notes on an instrument, or what have you…

    If Ego is sitting there saying “I’m separate from the action, because I’m better than the action, and I’m going to be judged by other Egos for the action that I’m taking” it stifles the very action it’s trying to take.

    So, if you want to be truly creative, you need to BE the action, not be apart from the action.

    This is who you are. It is who I am. We are that fine imbalance of actions and reactions with our desire for stability.

    On this little sojourn of ours, let’s consider one more quote, from a different book:

    Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose; the level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measure of our fear and disconnection.

    This quote is from Brené Brown’s book “Daring Greatly.” It’s all about the power of vulnerability in creating a better life experience for ourselves.

    And what is vulnerability but the elimination of our Ego barriers and immersing ourselves fully in the actions and experiences of life?

    It’s not that Ego should be entirely eliminated. It has its function in helping us have a unique experience, apart from other humans. Without it, we would be just one big collective consciousness. But that compartmentalization of experience is it’s only real function. Sadly, it seems to have been blown way out of proportion by the likes of Freud and whole generations following him.

    At our core, we are just our experiences. We create our actions and experience them. It is a never-ending stream, through which we constantly grow and change. Our identity is not static, as much as we may want to cling to that. Indeed, it’s the desire to cling to that kind of static identity that causes so much bitterness and nostalgia, rather than embracing the present fully.

    If you want to live a truly great life, immerse yourself in your identity; an identity of action and re-action, of having ideas and finding ways to make them real, of experience, of change. It is truly that simple.

    –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

    Ok, so I promised to tell you where those quotes came from, and I will. However, that’s a good story in and of itself, which distracts from the story here.

    Therefore, I’ll talk about the source in a separate post, here. However, before you go read that, I highly recommend that you think about the truth of these statements of their own right.