Category Archives: Learning

Know Your Truth

As you are sitting there, in your chair reading this article, you might begin to wonder that time in your life before you learned how to read, as you look at this letters strung together to make words and sentences. Because you don’t have to even think about reading this. It is just something that happens automatically, without even thinking about it.

But there was a time in your life, whether or not you can remember that now, I don’t know, when you couldn’t tell a “b” from a “d,” and maybe you even thought that an “a” was completely different and unrelated to an “A.” You just looked at all those squiggly lines, the same lines you are looking at now and understanding completely, as something completely incomprehensible.

Take a moment and imagine what that was like for you. You moved from a stage in life where something was completely obscure and inexplicable, and moved to now, when you can look at these letters as a normal part of every day life.

When you realize that this potential of yours, from moving from confusion to mastery, it not something restricted to your young years, but something that you can tap into on a regular basis, you will really notice pervasive changes being made in your life at an unconscious level.

When you really accept the idea the brain was really developed to be a life long learning machine, you can really start to appreciate the power that you have between your ears. Sure you can always choose to shuffle through life like most people, doing and thinking the same things every day, but you don’t have to.

You can choose to live in harmony with Infinite Intelligence, which is an all-encompassing ever-expanding expression of creation. When you accept this as your truth, you will naturally find yourself looking at the world a big differently.

People throughout history who have made this realization are the real creators of societies of old. Every time you choose to remember this truth, you will connected to intelligence far greater than you ever could possibly imagine.

You may think that this is a bit far fetched, but as you start to look around and find evidence of this, you can start to realize how much potential you really have. And you will learn how to exercise and apply your potential, just like you learned the ABC’s so easily when you were younger.

And one of the greatest things about new learnings and experiences is the profound impact they have on your identity, you self esteem, and your self-confidence. You really get an experiential knowing of what you can accomplish.

Of course, it’s not important to fully realize these truths now; you can decide to let them become part of who you are in your own time. There’s no rush. Infinite Intelligence has been around for quite some time (some might say even since before Infinity) and it will wait for to realize the truth of who you really are.

You can either choose to take these ideas immediately into your awareness, or you can choose to simply allow them to happen in their own time. Either way you are in for a profound change of viewpoint.

The question is how soon you will really begin to appreciate who you really are to the point of sharing your beautiful truth with others? Because the more you share, the more you receive. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

Life Long Learning

The other day I was talking to my neighbor about general things you usually talk to your neighbor about. (Usually the other neighbors!) The weather, how the temperature is rising and becoming more humid, the days getting longer, how hard it is to sleep in with the light of the sun blazing into your bedroom earlier and earlier. She was telling me about this class she’d been taking recently at the learning annex downtown. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone to the learning annex, I’m not sure how they operate or how many of them there are, but they are a great way to learn new things. Many times they are set up in conjunction with a local community college. I’ve taken classes in Tai Chi, Piano, Assertiveness as well as many other interesting subjects. One of the great things about them is they are fairly inexpensive, and are usually held in the evenings so you can easily work them into your schedule.

We started talking about the benefits of continuous learning, and how the smartest people in the world are the people that make a decision to always be learning something. People can, for instance, learn pretty much anything at any stage in life. There is a general misconception that we can really only learn things when we are really young, say under five years old. You don’t have to go very far to find somebody to tell you that you can’t learn as easily as you can when you were younger. But then again, you don’t have to go very far to find somebody who will happily tell you that you can’t do whatever it is you want to do. It seems that some people spend all their energy trying to find as many reasons as they can why something is not possible.

You may already have started to become aware of the times in your life when you’ve been able to really learn something new. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the greatest things you learn are the things that sneak up on you, and take you by surprise. It’s a sad fact that many people spend their whole lives avoiding the unfamiliar, effectively shutting themselves off from future learnings and experiences. I don’t know exactly some of us got into that trap, but when you can find a way to get around it, you will find that the world is a lot more forgiving than you think. I’m wondering if most of the things that we think we are afraid of are really just things that we make up in our minds. How does it feel when you face something you are afraid of, only to discover that simply by facing it, the fear completely disappears, and all you are left with is energy and excitement?

Maybe you haven’t gotten around to doing this consciously yet, but I’m sure you can find some opportunities to take care of this sooner or later. You won’t have to go very far to find an opportunity. A great place to start is at a public speaking club like toastmasters. Because almost everyone is deathly afraid of public speaking it is a great place to realize that those fears are completely imaginary. It’s not like some hungry tiger who just escaped from the circus is going to jump out from behind a potted plant during your speech and eat you, although I admit that might make for an interesting news story.

Fear is probably one of the reasons many people don’t take classes at the learning annex or at their local community college. Of course people won’t come right out and say “I’m afraid,” they usually come up with excuses like they are too busy or something. When you realize that everybody else that takes those classes are just like you, you can really enjoy discovering how wonderful it is to embark on a journey of life long learning. What happens when you take something you’d like to learn, but up to now have coming up with excuses for not learning it, and imagine yourself five years in the future having studied it as a hobby for the last five years? How does it feel to have developed such an advanced skill set by only approaching it as hobby? How much better is your life? How many other things can you imagine yourself doing, now? How does that feel?

Word Power Can Move Society Towards New Directions

I was very happy to hear recently about a new bookstore opening downtown. I don’t when it is going to open; I suspect it will be at least a few months, judging by the stage they are in the construction. Nevertheless, by the looks of it, it is going to be a doozy. Everyone who has ever been able to enjoy a bookstore has at one point or another realized that the more books there are, the better the choices you have. Really successful bookstores, and bookstores chains (you know the one’s I’m talking about) will even order books for you that they don’t have on the shelf. And some bookstores are well known for their customer support. I’ve generally found that the people that work there are lovers of books, as well as me.

I feel sorry for those who have never set foot into a bookstore, although I understand books can be intimidating to some people. The great library of Alexandria wasn’t burned to the ground by accident. Ever the printing press and books were invented; the written word has had an almost magical power over people. I remember a great line in a movie I saw recently, and two different characters were talking about the difference between the printed word and the electronically displayed word. They had just broken a fantastic story, uncovering a big conspiracy. They were debating on publishing it in their newspapers print version first, or on the newspapers blog. The blog writer conceded and said “People need to have ink on their hands after reading this.” I thought that was a great play on words.

It is generally believed that the Germans first invented the printing press, and the world has never been the same since. And for a long while, it was the people that controlled the printing presses that controlled the thought and beliefs of society. Who knows what would have happened to Western Society had the owners of the printing press been Moslems of Buddhists. You can certainly appreciate the wonderful effect words have on your daily life, can you not?

Once a society has words spread throughout, they can never go back to their previous beliefs and way of living. The first thing that occurs in a society when a printed word is introduced is that there is a subtle shift of power. And nothing is more powerful that a printing press to sway the masses. Can you think of anything as persuasive as a well-written piece of work in your very hands?

Again and again, great religions and governments throughout time have referred to the written word to propagate their power and influence. It’s not wonder that the Gideon society replaces their hotel bibles every so often. And it’s not only the Gideons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons and other religions have relied heavily on printed material to promote their faith.

When you really stop and start to realize the power and prevalence the written word has over every aspect of your life, you can’t help but to wonder what life could have possibly been like if you could only rely on word of mouth, and stories past down from generation to generation to keep ideas alive. And when you really become aware of your own power to create and promote your own written words, you will really feel a sense of awareness of how much power you have, literally at your fingertips.

Luckily we live in day and age when it is fairly easy to set up a blog and write several times a week or even several times a day to get your ideas out there. Should you not realize how powerful this concept is, just count how many blogs there are today versus how many there were five years ago. And when you think of how much money you’d be making today had you started blogging a few years ago, you can really feel motivated to start now.

How many ideas do you have that are worth sharing with others? How many ways can you imagine putting your figurative pencil to paper and getting your thoughts out in the collective consciousness to literally change the direction of society? Are you not just as worthy as some other random blogger out there? Who cares if nobody reads it or not, there is still a plethora of benefits to writing down your ideas every day and publishing them for all to see. I wonder if you are no already more convinced of this than most people. Because when you leave behind your old ideas of what you used to think was possible, you can really enter into a whole new reality, a reality of your own construction.

Where’s my Burrito?

The other day I was sitting in a Mexican restaurant downtown. It was remarkable in that my city doesn’t have very many Mexican restaurants, and I am a huge fan of Mexican food. Maybe because I grew up in Southern California, or maybe because I’ve traveled to Mexico several times, I just can’t get enough of the stuff. My favorites, of course, are the tacos you can buy from street vendors.

I’m sure you’ve eaten several different ethnic dishes in the past that you’ve thoroughly enjoyed. Just sitting there now, reading this, you can remember some of those dishes now. Maybe you ate them recently, or maybe it’s been a while, or maybe you’re even planning on eating soon. I think one of the greatest things about living a world with so many opportunities for cultural interchange is the incredible variety of food that you can enjoy. Realizing this can really give you an appreciation for different cultures. Most women know that the path to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but most people aren’t aware that the quickest way to the heart of another culture is through their kitchen.

When you realize this you can automatically begin to feel a great sense of appreciation for the other wide variety between cultures that is available to you, right here, right now. In this day and age, it is easy to understand this. And by eating the food of other cultures, it allows you to find other avenues to explore.

I have a friend who is a seasoned world traveler. She tells me the cuisine of a particular country has a great impact on her overall opinion of the place. Her favorite places are where she enjoys good meals. I don’t know if you can feel the same way or not, but when you understand the vast richness that cultural exchange can afford, you can easily begin to understand the benefits of world traveling.

Many people have realized that traveling is the best way to enrich your life. I was at a seminar a few years back, and the instructor was saying that people who have been to other countries tend to have an easier time learning new things. When you go to another country, and find yourself surrounded by people that look and dress and talk differently that you, you can find those things that you thought were important starting to drift away, making space in your mind for new and better ideas and beliefs. Of course, while few people have the time and resources to travel abroad extensively, everyone can find ways to expand your mind in your own neighborhood, even if it is going to an authentic restaurant, or studying a foreign language in your spare time.

Studying foreign languages is much easier than most people expect. People feel that can’t easily learn something new, but they realize that they can, you can begin to wonder how you may apply new ideas to increase your skills. And when you do this, you might be able to realize how easy this is.

Of course, most people realize the importance of learning. The understanding that most people don’t have yet, and you are receiving now is that learning never stops from occurring. There are those that say the biggest block to learning is education, because it removes your natural ability to learn things on a regular basis, so that you may easily and consistently improve yourself. You can understand this, can’t you?

One thing that can make the most pervasive changes in your life in several areas is the idea of continuous and conscious learning of new things. Whether it is of new cultures, new food, a new language, expanding your mind will always benefit you in the long run.

Now, back to my burrito.

Let Your Curiosity Lead the Way

I met a woman and her husband yesterday as I was hanging out in my favorite mall coffee shop. They were very friendly, and we had a lot in common, so we chatted for quite a while. He was telling me that they were getting ready to be relocated to the other side of the country. It was a promotion, so he was getting more money, and better benefits. But nevertheless, they were both nervous. They had both lived in this relatively small town their whole lives, and were going to be moving to a big city. You know how it is, right? You feel comfortable, like you’ve gotten the hang of everything, then suddenly it gets all turned upside down. You don’t know if you will be ok, or get what you need. You don’t even know where to start because everything is so new. On the one hand, you are glad to have this opportunity, but on the other hand, you are nervous, because you don’t know how this will turn out, and you don’t even know how to proceed.

They were telling me how their daughter was just learning to walk. She just turned two. She is at the age where you just become really curious about everything. You see something new, and you want to discover what this is. The only requirements are that you haven’t seen this before. You spend your whole existence, exploring, and walking around. Touching things, smelling things, tasting things. Many neuroscientists think this is the greatest resource of humanity, the power of curiosity. To seek new things. To search and discover simply for the sake of searching and discovering. You will never know when you will find this useful and interesting.

It’s like sometimes as adults, we can just let go of any expectation, and just let our curiosity lead us. We are old enough to stay away from danger, and to know this is a resource when we see something we like. Many of the great discoveries that we still use today came from when people were just able to let go of expectations and ask “What if?” Life can seem dreary and repetitive when we forget to do this on a regular basis. Let your curiosity lead the way.

They were telling me their happiest times (so far!) of being parents was to watch their kid find something she thought was exciting, and just feel good for discovering this. Like you can really feel a sense of accomplishment when your curiosity has led you to something cool like this. She was telling me that she likes to follow her kid around in bookstores, just like the one we were sitting in, and watch her daughter go through the joys of being able to learn something new.

Which is why he was telling me that although they were a bit nervous about leaving their comfortable small town, with the same people and the same shops and the same restaurants, they were really excited about moving to the huge metropolis where they were going. He said that he jumped on the opportunity when it presented itself. I’m sure they will do fantastic in their new life.

How to Create a Powerful Burning Desire

If you’ve ever read any books on goal achievement, or read any articles on the subject, I’m sure that you’ve heard the oft repeated phrase of “burning desire” or “white hot desire” or some other description. The idea being that you need to make sure that when you create a goal, it’s not some half baked wish that you kind of sort of hope might maybe come true someday, if everything goes ok, and as long as you don’t get in trouble. You need to charge your visualized picture of your realized goal with such strength of desire your brain will work on making it come true, even when you are not paying attention.

The problem is, few people have the discipline and the willpower to even create a visualization of a realized goal, let alone charge it several times a day with white hot burning desire. There are several reasons for this that I’d like to explore, and to come up with ways to help you create a goal, and charge it with sufficient desire in order to make it a reality, instead of some pie in the sky wish.

Imagine what it was like back in the old days. No, I don’t mean the old days before the Internet, I mean the really old days before agriculture. Many scientists believe that mankind lived in our present physical and mental state under the conditions prior to agriculture for at least a hundred thousand years. Living in groups of fifty to two hundred, life was tough. There wasn’t a consistent source of food, so we had to wander, and follow whatever we could to eat. Because humans are generally considered omnivores, meaning that we can eat pretty much anything, we generally took whatever we could find. Plants, animals, roots, each other.

In each group of hunter-gatherers, there was generally one “Alpha” male. Several studies done on chimps show that the alpha male gets most of the food, and most of the sex. The rest of us hacks had to fight for ours. Imagine what it was like living in this state. Always hungry. Living with desire as a constant companion, reminding us to always search and creatively think of ways to get our basic needs met.

Fast forward to today. When we’re hungry, we just stumble over to the fridge and shove food in our mouths. When we are thirsty, we drink. When we want sex, well, there’s always the Internet, if you catch my drift. We have come to think of any desire as a temporary inconvenience that needs to be quickly gotten rid of in the quickest way possible.
Is it any wonder so many people today are overweight, and underpaid? It is any wonder that so many of us drift through a life of mediocrity, never summoning the courage to demand from life what we really want?

The first step then, is to make friends with desire. Focus on the feeling of desire itself, instead of any frustration that comes up when it can’t be immediately pacified. Learn to live with desire. Hunger is your friend. It keeps you motivated to shun short-term sugary fixes, and focus your energies and creativity on more worthy, long-term goals.

The first step, of course, is to follow any good procedure to create well-formed goals. You can google “well formed goals” or search this site for ways to do this. When you have a well formed goal, the next step is to create three or four rich visualizations of what you will see, hear, feel, smell and taste when the goal is realized. Driving your new car, enjoying your new house, seeing and feeling the new paycheck. Choose three or four rich, descriptive, fully associated pictures of your goal. Once you have a few pictures, you need to charge them.

Whenever you feel a desire, pause for a few moments before rushing to fulfill it. Breathe in the desire and experience the feelings in the now. Let go of any thoughts about the future, or imaginations about the past. Fully feel your desire. Now while you are still feeling the emotional now feeling of your desire, focus on one of your visualizations. Focus on your visualization until the physical/emotional feeling of the desire subsides.

Experiment with putting off the short-term satisfaction of your desires. If you desire is for food, wait a few moments before eating. Realize that your feeling of hunger can be tapped to power your desire of your goal. If your desire is for water, pause, and imagine the desire as your goal. When you eat or drink, imagine your desire as being fulfilled. Practice as well with your breath. Exhale completely, and wait until you feel a real desire to breath. Before inhaling, experience your visualization. As you inhale and feel the sweet breath fill your lungs, see your goal being achieved as well. There’s a reason those who have achieved greatness describe their success and “eating drinking and breathing their goal.”

If you want to really turbo charge your desires, experiment with your sexual desires. Feel the sexual desire, release any imaginations and feel only the physical feeling. Then while feeling and appreciating that feeling and desire, visualize your goals. The more often you can do this, and the longer you can charge your goals each time, the better. Napoleon Hill devoted a whole chapter to this in “Think and Grow Rich.” You an google this as well and read the entire chapter, or even the book, online for free. I would recommend keeping your own copy handy to refer to when you are waiting in the dentists office or at Starbucks.

Desire can be a source of fantastic power, or daily frustration, all depending on how you use it in conjunction with your mind and imagination. Many people throughout history have known this, but few have been able to truly tap this power for incredible success. There is no reason why you can’t start now to create the life of your dreams.

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The Mirror of Your Soul

I was riding a bus recently to another city. There was a particular art exhibit I was interested in, and because it was fairly small, I had to travel to another city to see it. It’s one of those things that you know this is really special when you see this, even if you can’t put your finger on it. It’s like there is something here that you can’t really describe but you really feel compelled to come here and look. Some people feel this way about different forms of music, or poetry, or performance art. Others feel this feeling about certain restaurants or shops. It is something defies logical explanation. But for some reason, you feel strangely compelled to see this.

So I was on this bus ride, and I was sitting next to this guy who was reading this book on esoteric philosophy. Just judging by the way he was reading the book, it seemed to be a deep subject. He would read for a few moments, and then look out the window, as if in deep thought. Then he would get his look of recognition on his face, and then turn back to the book. He did this several times, until I finally got up the courage to ask him about the book. I could only see the partial title, and I’m not even sure then if I could make out the title correctly.

He said it was a philosophical book about human emotions. The particular section that he was reading, and kept looking out the window to digest, was based on some writings of some ancient Indian scholar. He said the name a few times, but for the life of me I can’t remember even how many syllables it contained, let alone how it was pronounced. But he said that humans are basically transmitters of our emotions. That when humans come into contact, we communicate long before the first words are spoken.

If you are in a particularly high vibrational state, that is if you are holding “good” emotions predominantly in your body, like confidence, acceptance, appreciation, you will be primarily attract the emotional energy of others, as it matches your emotional energy. The converse is also true. If you hold more “negative” emotions, like fear, anger, jealousy, and judgment, you will attract those emotions as well.

He also said that if you have a mix of the two, negative and positive, like most people do, whenever you come in contact with another person or a group the “average” emotional energy will generally win out. He said that the transfer and commingling of emotions among people could be treated almost as a science. The secret to attracting people in your life that you want to support and help you, is to first become that which you want to attract.

He said that many people fool themselves into thinking they are emitting positive emotions, when in reality they are emitting emotions of need and lack, and they have convinced themselves otherwise. That is why this is such a hard concept to understand, because of our strong ability at self-deception.

He said that the real secret is to first understand yourself, and your emotions before trying to worry about those of others. Once you get a hold on your own emotions, the rest is easy. Because once you dig deep enough, and hold your emotions positive, that is all you will attract, and the rest will disappear. I asked him exactly how to do that, and he said that he hadn’t gotten that far in the book.

I told him that you should keep reading, until you can discover the secret here. Then find me and tell me about it. He just laughed and went back to his book, as if he knew something that the rest of us don’t, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see. If you have any secrets, please share them, so we can figure his out.

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How to Accept and Benefit from Criticism

I bumped into a friend of mine last weekend. At the time, I wasn’t going anywhere in particular. You know those days. You don’t really feel like hanging out at home, but you don’t really have any major things you want to accomplish. The weather is nice. You have the day off. Most of the important stuff that you usually do on the weekends, laundry, straighten up your desk, all that stuff is done. So you pick a few destinations that you’d like to explore. Bookstore, mall, coffee shop. You take your time because you just want to enjoy a lazy day of wandering around. Content to float around with no real pressing need to hit all your semi important maybe get to destinations. Which is exactly what I was doing when I bumped into my friend. And which is exactly I immediately agreed to go and grab lunch, even though I’d already eaten, and it was four o clock in the afternoon.

He stated telling me about this interesting problem he was having. It seems there was a new manager at his job. She had been brought in from a different division. He worked for a manufacturing company that made large parts that were then sold to various automobile manufacturers around the world. They were largely non-moving, machined metal parts, that were very versatile, so they could be sold to a number of different companies, both domestically and internationally.

The problem he was having was that his new manager had no real experience in this particular area. She had worked in the head office her whole career, in the accounting department, and really didn’t know anything about the companies operations other than what she saw described on a balance sheet. Because of recent economic problems, she was brought in to see if there were any areas where they could save money, so the company could still remain profitable. My friends company sold to a diverse enough group of carmakers than the collapse of one, two, or even three major U.S. manufacturers wouldn’t necessarily cause their business any harm. So she was brought in just to make sure that they could stay in the black, and nobody would have to loser their job.

The problem began, when she came in, thinking she was helping out, which she was from a larger standpoint. The overall health of the company is important. But the workers, all the guys that reported to my friend, didn’t see it that way. They saw her as somebody coming in to tell them what they were doing wrong. One thing they didn’t like was they she was what they called a “pencil pusher,” or a “desk jockey,” who couldn’t begin to understand what it was like machining parts on sophisticated machines, all day. Two, she was a woman. And this kind of job had always been a traditional, male dominated job. So straight away they was a large feeling of enmity between them, before they even got a chance to meet.

So my friend had to figure out how to explain to them that criticism isn’t always bad. Sometimes criticism is to help you, even to make your life easier in the long run. He wanted to tell them that those that can accept criticism with an open mind will really benefit in the long run. Many successful people have realized early in their career that criticism does much more good than harm, if taken the right way. You can take other peoples criticism of you, even if it’s mean spirited, and extract from it useful information that you can use to improve yourself. Most people can’t see this, and see criticism only as a personal attack. Few people don’t realize that even if you do receive criticism as a personal attack, you can always “erase the emotion and save the data” to learn something. It’s always important to realize that in almost every interaction, you can learn something constructive.

So what my friend decided to do was to speak with her, and suggest that she come to them with questions, and then let them answer them. She will describe how she is representing corporate headquarters in a quest to save ALL their jobs, and she needs their help in figuring out to do that. Kind of an “us against them” mentality. To figure out a way to work together, without any criticism, and let them not only explain to her how they do their jobs, but to elicit their opinions on how the could do it better, and cheaper.

I thought it was a pretty good plan, and I’m curious to see how this turns out.

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Cyclists Spy the Sea

I was hanging out in a bookstore this morning. I got a Robert Ludlum spy book that I haven’t read before. I like reading spy books from time to time, because it’s kind of interesting when you get engrossed in this and you become really curious as to what is going to happen. It’s like you are sitting there, reading this, and you’re not exactly sure what is going to come next. One of the things I don’t really like about Ludlum books is, for me at least, they seem to take a while to get going. And the funny thing is, that even though I’ve read many of them, and should know by now what to expect, I have the same experience over and over. It’s like as soon as I start reading, I seem to forget what is happening. Usually the first hundred pages or so are the hardest. I usually have the same thoughts as I almost have to force myself to continue reading.  I sometimes wonder what I’m doing, maybe I could be doing something better.

One of my friends that I used to go bike riding with used to have the same experience. We used to go riding up these really long and windy hills where I used to live. The kind of hills where when you look up, you think you can see the top, but you’re not sure. Then when you get to where you think the top is, you go around the bend just a little bit and BAM there is another hill waiting for you. Unless you’ve ridden those course several times, it’s really easy to forget where you are and hope that you have enough energy to keep on going, hoping you won’t pass out before you get to the top.

Which is cool because on top is this really big park, next to one of these new age churches. And there is this pastor at the church who sometimes sits in the park when he is not busy counseling people. The park has a fantastic view of the city. It’s amazing what you can see from a different perspective. Sometimes this pastor talks to us and tells us these crazy stories. Once he gave us a lecture about the meaning of life. He said when you are a child, and think in childish ways, you expect other people to give you things, to provide for you. He said that the true measure of an adult is someone who has decided to make the transition from being a receiver from others to become a giver to others. He said the middle part is what is difficult for most people, because it can sometimes take a few years to get through, if at all. Many people get stuck in the middle part, and never get out. It’s so confusing because you are a grown adult with a job and maybe a family, but you still have a little bit of “what’s in it for me” kind of mentality. He said the amazing thing about life is that when you fully release dependency, you will become aware of the abundance of resources that you can gather with your the energy you’ve freed up by becoming fully human. He said that is what St. Paul was talking about when he said that stuff about putting away childish things, and how love is really a verb rather than a feeling. The guy also had some other stories which I hope I can remember this later.

But the other good thing about this hill is on the other side, is a fantastic, long road that looks as though it was built for cyclists. Even though this park is about twenty miles from the nearest body of water, you can see the ocean. And the road kind of curves to the left as it goes down, and there are no intersections for about two miles. So all you have to do is wait at the top until all the cars go by, and you can pretty much ride down the middle of the big, wide road without worrying about cars. And the bottom is long and flat, so you have plenty of time to slow down. The fastest I ever went down that hill was just a fraction over fifty MPH. That was an incredibly exhilarating experience that I’ll always remember.

The funny thing is, once I get past the one hundred page mark, I usually can’t put a Ludlum book down to save my life. All the characters and the story just springs to life. It’s really weird that way. All those feelings of doubt and worry that I had before about wasting my time or whatever just seem to mysteriously vanish. Which is one of the reasons I love to read. Reading gives you a great perspective on things.

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Use Roman Superiority to Focus on Your Talent

I was watching this TV show last night on the history channel. It had something to do with ancient Rome, although I’m not sure of the exact topic, as I was just flipping around. You how you do that, right? When you know there is a lot of stuff on TV, but you don’t really want to watch anything specific, so you just kind of aimlessly click through the channels? Sometimes you might find something interesting, other times you just keep on surfing without any real idea of what kind of show you even want to watch.

That’s what I was doing. In retrospect, I wish I’d have known about the show on Rome earlier. It was about the Roman Military,and their military strategy, but it wasn’t only about Rome. It was kind of a overview of history of countries or empires that had world dominance from a military standpoint. And the angle of the show was how whoever had the most technology, had the edge. It didn’t matter exactly how high or low the technology was, so long as you are better than your competitor.

Like for example the Egyptians were pretty much top dog, until the Romans came alone with their slightly superior fighting style. And that’s one of the interesting things about Rome’s military advantage. They didn’t really have a lot of sophisticated weaponry that other countries didn’t have. The one thing they did was develop incredible discipline. Their soldiers were extremely well trained, and together they fought like a well oiled machine.

It reminded me of a book I read a few years ago. It was a novel of historical fiction, of which type I hadn’t ever really read up until that point. That novel was a kind of a power struggle/drama/ love story based in ancient Phoenicia.  It was really interesting once I was able to naturally get into it. Reading books have always been a great pleasure of mine. One of the great things about books is that you can take them anywhere you want to escape from the boredom of everyday life just for a little bit and lose yourself in something.

I didn’t use to like books, because I thought they were kind of boring. It isn’t until you really take the time to get into this that you can really appreciate what’s here. And when you read with that kind of mindset, a whole world opens up for you. It’s like you see something that was there all along, just waiting for you to realize this. You can really find new ways to enjoy this, you know?

The book itself was pretty interesting, and I was able to dive into it so deep that I had to keep checking wikipedia to make sure that this was factually correct, because it was so incredibly interesting. It was about a couple of brothers, one younger and one older. And the older was going to inherit the fathers kingdom when he died, but the younger one was better suited to rule the throne. And they both happened to fall in love with the same woman. So it was kind of a love story, power struggle for the throne kind of story. At least the power struggle part was fairly accurate. I don’t know about the love story part. I guess authors need to embellish a little bit to make history come alive enough to make this interesting, you know?

So anyways, it turns out that particular show was a series in military strategy or something. Each week they would highlight a different empire or country, and focus on their particular talent which made them stand out. Which I’ll definitely make the decision to come back to and watch it again and again, because naturally, I find this incredibly fascinating.

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