Month: January 2014

Success Tip #2: Don't get stuck in the gloom and doom!
Climate change. Peak Oil. Nuclear disasters. Political dysfunction. Erectile dysfunction. Murder and war…

From watching the news, you would think we were all going to die by tomorrow at the latest — possibly before the clock ticks away the rest of this very hour.

I used to be fully immersed in this kind of gloom-and-doomerism. During that time in my life, a few things happened:
- My finances went to hell, and I racked up over $100k in debt from a failed business (along with other debts from personal spending).
- My relationships with friends, family, and colleagues degenerated — in some cases quite seriously.
- My living environment went downhill substantially as junk I thought I might need “in case the world ends” piled up around me.
- My work nearly stalled out, because why push anything forward when the world is about to end?
Fortunately, I’m well beyond that phase now, and I’m happy to report that each one of those things has seen a dramatic turnaround. The debt is largely paid off, my living situation is far better, my relationships are healthier, and work is progressing with FUN at a phenomenal pace.

It is now only an occasional interaction with someone that reminds me about where I used to be just a few short years ago, totally immersed in doomerism.

Yesterday was just such a day.

I had a conversation with someone who wanted to improve her life but still had two feet firmly planted in the doomer camp, not to be uprooted by even my best efforts. She was sure the world was going to hell because of climate change. It was so clear to her. We were all going to end in floods, fire, and brimstone, and only cockroaches will survive to eat the plastic scraps off of our discarded electronics and mutate into giant monsters. OK, she wasn’t THAT gloomer-istic, but she was negative enough to remind me of those old days when I was in that mode. It was a cynical, depressing mode to be in.

As your thinking goes, so goes your life. If you focus on all the things that can go wrong, are going wrong, and will certainly go wrong, guess where your own life goes? You guessed it: it goes wrong. That person’s life will not improve until she gets “de-doomerized.”

So how much doomerism and fear are you practicing in your own life? Where is that taking you? It’s a question worth asking.

Don’t worry, climate change IS happening. Absolutely.

I do not deny that climate change is happening. Climate change is always happening. It is the natural order of things. Ice ages come and go. Continents move. Sea currents change. Gasses accumulate then get absorbed. Solar output waxes and wanes.

While the theoretical debate rages on about what the human involvement in this change was, that debate is irrelevant, because…

Change is inevitable in everything in our world.

I don’t know how we as a species got to this point where change freaks us out so much. Change is the order of the day in life. Your body is changing constantly. Politics are changing constantly. Even rocks change constantly as the atoms whir and spin, bonds break and regroup.

Amidst all of this change that is always happening, each one of us gets to make a daily choice. That choice is simple: What part of the change do you focus on?

If you focus on all the bad aspects of change, such as the myriad ways in which our species is quite likely to die off, you will only amplify that stuff in your own life. And understand that you cannot improve your health, your well-being, your impact, or your wealth while you’re focused on this stuff. It will cause exactly the same kind of downward spiral that I found myself in from 2007-2010.

On the flipside, you can focus on the positive aspects of change. Take the fossil fuels and global climate change example. Has the overuse of fossil fuels motivated some positive developments? Hell yeah. I drive a Chevy Volt electric car, and it is way more fun to drive than any fossil-fuel-powered beast. It has instant torque, it is zippy, it is tight, it is totally quiet. There’s nothing like pulling up to a stop light, having some driver look over at me with the clear intent to zoom ahead of me, and when the light turns green, quickly and silently disabusing them of their silly notion that electric cars are slow. It is FUN! Would such a car have been built if people weren’t trying to move beyond fossil fuels? Quite unlikely.

There are two sides to every change: the positive side and the negative side.

Change is like a coin, and our work as humans is to decide which side we want to focus on. I can tell you that once you start focusing on the positive, exciting side of the coin, life becomes a wonderful, expansive, fun-filled place of growth, adventure, and excitement.

So I ask you to ask yourself: which side of that coin ARE you focused on? Is that focus serving you? If you don’t like your answers to those questions, remember that change is simple. Just change your focus. Look at the good that’s coming out of changes, and focus on contributing to that good part! Your life will expand in great, positive ways you probably couldn’t have imagined.
January 30, 2014
Want Happiness and Productivity? Get to that Core! (video)

Isn’t it funny how the more we try to have control — swatting at negative emotions and demands like buzzing flies — the more frustrated we get and the less in control we feel? That’s because when we’re reacting, we’re giving up control. We’ve decided to let an outside force set our agenda for us.

Now, that doesn’t mean we should stick our fingers in our ears and go through life singing “I can’t hear you” to anything unpleasant that comes along. Control isn’t about tuning out the un-fun stuff or having things go our way. It’s about getting in touch with what we do want. That takes practice, and patience, and relaxed time spent thinking about what you want to be doing and why.

Turn off your phone, give your “glowing rectangles” a break, and listen for that voice inside that says “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?” The more frequently you listen for it, the louder it gets. Pretty soon, you’ll feel inspired to do something about it. The steps you take from there are your most powerful.

That’s being proactive.

January 18, 2014
How to be a massive success, idea #1: don't get reactive
I’ve been writing this and my other blogs for a while, but that doesn’t make me immune from making stupid mistakes.

In this case, my mistake got me unfriended and blocked on Facebook. It got me no perceptible forward movement on anything I truly think is important in life. It got me wrapped up in turmoil. It got me writing long blog posts with little response.

It was a waste of time and energy.

As with any negative thing that happens in life, it’s always vital to ask: what’s the lesson? What was I meant to learn? There’s always a lesson. In this case of getting unfriended and blocked, it took me a while to discover. When I did it was profoundly powerful.

The realization was that I had gotten into a mode of reactive, knee-jerk thinking rather than proactive thinking. It was reflecting in my posts on Facebook and on my blog. They were reactive posts. They were against stuff I don’t like rather than towards stuff I want or like.

It is never a way to build towards anything good in life. It is a step backward, and that’s why I’d been feeling so poorly. It’s why I felt stuck. (Which doesn’t happen often these days, fortunately!)

One of the most negative modes of habit that any of us can get into is reactive mode. That’s a mode where we are emotionally reacting against stuff we don’t like, rather than working towards stuff we like.

What is reactivity?

Reactive is defined as showing a response to a stimulus. It is the process of observing or seeing something in the outside world, then having a knee-jerk response about that thing (which might, for example, including writing a blog post about something one doesn’t like – no, I’ve never done that… wink, wink).

The opposite of that state is proactivity. Proactivity is acting from an internal motivation to do something positive, good, and forward moving.

The past few blog posts that I wrote were all written from the reactive standpoint. They were responses to things that I didn’t like or agree with that I’d seen in my outer environment.

This blog post is the (re)starting of a new direction – something that comes from that inner drive to move forward, and to help others in doing the same. It’s not that all my blogs in the past have been reactive. They haven’t been. It’s been an unconsciously planned mix of both proactive and reactive writing. A random mix is not good enough. Not to create massive success, that is.

The mix

That’s how most of us operate in our daily lives. We have this blend of reacting much of the time, with the occasionally inspired proactive thing that we do.

But that’s not enough. If you’re going to do anything great in this world, you can only do it proactively. Whether your greatness lies in inventing, discovering, writing, building great wealth, or whatever…. it can’t be done in reactive mode. It can only be done proactively.

This is one of the biggest shifts that I’ve made over the past 4 years. I’ve gone from someone who reacts nearly all the time, with only occasional proactivity, to someone who is proactive much of the time, with occasional reactivity. So for me, this “month of reactivity” that I fell into last month was a good reminder of where that leads: on a road to nowhere.

Emotion is bad… no… good… no… which is it?!…. (aaaahhhhhhhhhh)

There’s a lot of confusion about emotion and feeling, and it’s role in a productive life. Some would have you turn all your emotion and feeling off, and to become a mindless robot just going through the motions. These are the people who believe that all emotion and feeling is bad and leads to sin, temptation, and downfall.

Others (like me sometimes) claim that you “have to listen to your feelings” to move quickly and intuitively towards what you want out of life. Are you confused by that?

Most people are. Let me attempt to de-confusify things:
1. If an emotion (or feeling) comes from reactivity towards something you’ve seen or experienced – especially if that thing is negative – in all likelihood it isn’t going to help you one little bit to act upon it. You will find yourself just making the situation worse – as I experienced with my reactive blogging. For example, let’s say you see a mouth-watering piece of chocolate cake on the counter, and it tempts you to “eat me now!” Let’s say you’re reactive, so you do exactly that. Where does that get you? Heavier and less healthy.
2. If a feeling (or emotion) comes from an internally generated desire for something positive, such as “hey, I want to share this great idea with people” or “what if I call up Fred to tell him about this idea I had” or whatever – then in all likelihood you will help yourself move much more quickly towards what you want. In contrast to our chocolate cake example, let’s say you want to get fit. So you proactively feel like going for a run. Where does that get you? Feeling even better, building muscle, and getting more fit. It’s the opposite of the reactive chocolate cake eating.
We get out of life what we focus on (and therefore act upon). If you are focused on these proactive feelings and emotions, you are acting upon something very different than if focused on the reactive stuff.

If you are acting reactively, you are by definition acting behind the curve. If your action is proactive, you are ahead of the curve.

Leaders, innovators, and successful people are always acting ahead of the curve, which means they think and take action proactively.

Commit to being proactive, and get success in return

If you want to be a great success in whatever you do, make this one commitment: to become proactive at all times.

Is it easy? No. You will be tested and challenged on a regular basis to get sucked back in.

Is it worth it? Yes. The world will open up to you in proportion to how much you act and think proactively, rather than reactively.
January 6, 2014