Tag Archives: Choice

Seventy Five or a Hole in One

When I was a kid I had this kit that I bought from Radio Shack. It was a 75 in 1 do it yourself electronic kit. It had a large circuit board, and it had a booklet that showed you how to hook up seventy five different simple electronic circuits from strobe lights, to radio receivers, to lie detectors. It was pretty cool, and most kids had them. They were really popular. The cool thing about them was the way they were designed. You would think that having seventy-five different electronic circuits would have a lot of complex components, but it was actually fairly simple. There was quite a bit of overlap between the circuits, so the whole kit could easily fit inside a small box, much smaller than you’d imagine.

I remember a friend of mine bought a specific golf club once. He had played golf for several years, and for the longest time only had this set of clubs that he’d bought a long time ago, back when he was in high school. For the longest time he never used any other club except for these. Then one day he was invited to play in a tournament at a course that he normally couldn’t afford. His boss knew somebody and he got picked at the last minute. He showed up, with his old inexpensive set of clubs. He was ok at first, but somewhere along the line he got into trouble

On the back nine, he found himself in a particular unique hazard. It was a partial pond, but also a partial heavy grass. He looked into his bag, but he didn’t have a particular club for that shot. After a few moments delay, he finally settled on an eight iron. Not the best club for this, but it worked. For some reason, even though the shot was a good shot, and everybody complimented him on his resourcefulness, he felt a little ashamed of having to pull out an old eight iron into that situation. He’d noticed that all the others around him had all kinds of specific clubs for each particular hazard.

Of course as soon as the tournament was over, he went out and shopped and shopped until he found a club that was designed for that particular hazard in mind. He promptly put it in his bag, where it stayed.

I had this professor in college, a professor of philosophy. Dr. Mclurg at San Diego State, probably one of the most influential professors I’ve ever had. He had a particularly engaging way of arguing. He’d grab your attention, pull it in, and you couldn’t help but to see things from several different perspectives at once. Whenever the class finished, I always felt as if my mind had been irreversibly expanded, and I could never go back to my previous way of thinking. One of the striking things about him was that he almost always wore the same shirt. It was a normal, regular button down shirt, but he seemed to always wear the same one. It was if he had decided that the particular thing you are using, despite whether it’s an article of clothing, or an electronic component, as long as it works, it doesn’t really matter what other people think about that. It’s not like the shirt that you wear is going to affect your philosophical arguing points.

Probably the coolest thing I ever did with my seventy five in one electronic kit was to take the strobe light, which was only set up for the amps and current for a small 1.5 volt bulb, and run the light in my bedroom through the circuit. It created a really cool powerful strobe light. And it actually lasted a few minutes before the whole circuit board caught on fire due to overheating. Probably the best thing about that was, by the time I’d saved up my allowance to buy a replacement kit, the newest version was a 150 in 1 kit. Me and my friends really had a blast with that one, and I managed to not burn down my house in the process.

Last time I saw my friend, I asked him if he’d ever used that club, and of course he said he didn’t. He kept it as a reminder to always make sure he was using things for the right reason, and not because he thought he was supposed to according to what other people supposedly thought.

Choose Your Beliefs for Effortless Success

I was surfing the interwebs the other day and came across an interesting podcast. Some guy was talking about beliefs, and how they are really an interesting concept that, unfortunately, most people don’t give a second thought. They work as presuppositional filters on the reality that is outside our consciousness. The way they work is by separating out information that doesn’t match with what we think is true.

This is due to our evolutionary past. When we were in an area that was populated by red spotted tigers, our ancestors would quickly learn that they were dangerous. The brain was then programmed with a collection of information, sounds complex mathematical visual representations. If a red spotted tiger was detected by any one of our senses, it would automatically trigger a fight or flight induced panic, giving us the energy to run away. Conversely, when we lived in an environment which had a small green fruit that was extremely tasty and provided long term energy, that became important as well. So when our ancestors were out walking around and spotted one or a bunch of these out of the corner of their eyes, they immediately felt hungry and remembered how good these things taste.

Because humans can be so flexible and adaptable (arguably this is why we were the ones Mother Nature chose to give such big brains to,) we lived in several different environments. Because of this, we developed the capability of shifting the desirable and undesirable things in our environment for our brains to be on the lookout for. In one place and one generation, it might have been lions and purple fruits. In another place, and another generation, it might have been huge flying predators and small animals that were delicious.

So how does this affect you, and moreover, how can you profit from it? This is how beliefs work. Despite living in a modern society, where we have police to protect us from predators and grocery stores to provide us with all the food that we need, we still have these filtering mechanisms in our brains. These filtering mechanisms come into play when we have certain beliefs. The scary thing is, sometimes these beliefs can be self-sustaining. That is, if we believe a certain thing (even though it isn’t true) and see random events, which we take to be “proof” of these untrue beliefs, they reinforce the belief, making it harder to get rid of. Let’s say you believe that members of the opposite sex find you disgusting. You go through out your day, and because this belief has been programmed strong enough, you will only find evidence of it being true. Just like our cavemen ancestors only saw the purple fruits and ignored the rest, you will only register and remember the one odd fellow out of a hundred that behaves in a way that might be considered loathsome towards you. This of course reinforces the belief, which depressed you, changes your behavior, and actually invites behavior from others that reinforce this belief.

How about another example. You read the papers, watch the news, and decide the economy is in shambles. You go out, and only notice expensive things you can’t afford, people on the street begging for money, shops having going out of business sales, and so on. This reinforces this belief, and directly affects your ability to make money. What happens when you realize that even in a down economy, there are plenty of people making money? What do they believe about the economy? Many believe a down economy is the best time to start a new business venture, because you are getting in on the ground floor of future growth. Many people learn to see a down economy as an opportunity for wealth, rather than a scary situation.

The bottom line is you have two choices. You can choose to let your beliefs be set by others, and wander through life reacting to the world. Or you can sit down, spend a few hours, and choose powerful beliefs you would like to be true. For example, how would you feel if you believed you could easily make lots of money? How would it feel if you could easily persuade people to your way of thinking? How would it feel if you believed you were a highly talented writer, or musician, or actor? How would your life change for the better?

Although it does take effort, and time, the results are powerfully rewarding. You can either drift through life and hope to get lucky, or you can choose your beliefs, and go out and find (or make!) evidence of their truth. The longer you keep at this, the sooner the beliefs will start to sink in to an unconscious level, operating automatically.

This is where the magic really starts to happen.

Give Me Victory, and Give Me Sex!

The other day I was watching this football game on TV. They were kicking the ball around, running up and down the field. I’ve heard that football players, or soccer players a they’re called in some parts of the world, are the best-conditioned athletes there are. I had an acquaintance once that I worked with that was a semi-pro soccer player. He asked me casually to participate in an upcoming marathon with him. Being a dumb high school kid at the time, I readily agreed. I thought it would be fun. He, being the semi-pro soccer player, was in fairly good shape, so running a marathon wasn’t a problem for him. Me, on the other hand, despite being a dumb high school kid, wasn’t quite as prepared, as I should have been.

Personally, I like the story behind the marathon. Some Greek guy ran 40 kilometers after the Greeks, led by the Athenians, defeated the Persians at the battle of Marathon around 500 BC. He ran from the city of Marathon to Athens to tell the Athenians that they were victorious. This wasn’t just a celebratory run. Had the Greeks lost at Marathon, the Persians would have marched straight to Athens and sacked the city, burned the temples, killed the men and raped the women. That was what happened back in those days. So the Greek guy who ran the 40K to tell the city was doing them a great favor. He was telling them they weren’t going to be killed and raped and then all their property destroyed. It would be a terrible thing to be sitting around hoping that a foreign army is going to come marching on your city in a couple days to make your last moments of life a new experience in suffering and pain.

The story goes that when this Greek guy reached Athens, he said the word “Victory!” and then fell dead. And of course, “Victory” in Greek is “Nike”, which is where the brand name comes from. Maybe if the poor guy had been wearing a pair of shoes, he wouldn’t have fallen dead. But I’m not so sure if that was the whole story, or the motivation for this Greek guy was merely to let the poor Athenians they were saved. You’ve heard the old saying, “Don’t shoot the messenger,” right? Well that saying is around because they actually did used to shoot the messenger. If somebody arrived with bad news, they generally were so angry that they killed the guy. I’m sure you seen or heard about the famous scene where the guy shouts “This is Sparta!” and then proceeds to kill the messenger and all his co-messengers by kicking them down that long well.

When the messenger arrived with good news, they did the opposite. He was treated like a rock star. Food, women, anything he wanted for a couple of days. This wasn’t really an official procedure of the city; this is just the way it worked out. Some guy would return from a big battle, and let the city know their men had succeeded, which meant that the other cities army wasn’t going to come and destroy everybody. Naturally, everybody was ecstatically happy, and the center of all this happiness was the lucky messenger. So of course, he got invited to parties, and orgies and whatever other celebratory customs were around.

So I don’t know if that Greek guy, who gave birth to both a very traditional Olympic sport and a world famous brand of athletic wear, had anything on his mind other than all the insane partying he was going to do for the next two or three days. Of course that version is not the most romantic version, but a funny things happen to stories over time. They get repeated and changed and take on whatever the current belief system that rests in the cultural consciousness. Because current western culture is still very steeped in traditional religious beliefs and sexual taboos, that part of the story is kind of only snickered at or not taken very seriously. Because, like it or not, a large part of the western culture is firmly rooted in the Church, namely because the Church was the major governing power until only recently. Stories from other cultures are either rejected, or filtered through the societies collective consciousness to mold to whatever messages we’d like to read into a story of historical event.

True power and choice comes when you can choose your own set of beliefs and filters through which you can see the world. If you can take a true objective view of the current values and priorities of the society you live, and only choose to take on those beliefs and values that serve you and the choices you’ve made for what you want your life to become, then you’re a step ahead of most other people. The sad fact about living in modern society is that most people are content to let others do their thinking for them, and dictate to them what is important and what isn’t. When you can truly learn to think for yourself, and decide your own direction in life, you will as victorious as the Greeks were at Marathon.

My friend finished the Marathon in around three and a half hours. I finished in barely under five. It took a huge amount of focus to keep going and not throw in the towel. I realized at about mile ten that I was in way over my head, so I had a tough choice to make, and both choices would have it’s own set of consequences. The next 16 miles proved to be a horrible. One of the things that greatly helped me to finish was all the people standing along the course cheering the runners on. It is one experience that I will never, ever forget.

Take Charge of Your Mind

I was listening to these two guys arguing over some political issue on the radio the other night. Lately it has been a big issue, with people from both sides seemingly digging into their positions. Just like those two guys were. Recently it has been in the news quite a bit, and prominently written about on many online news sources and blogs. I’m sure you’ve seen more than enough of it recently. Which is why it was interesting that I listened to these two guys going at it for as long as I did. They weren’t really bringing anything new to the discussion; they both seemed to be repeating the same arguments that had been repeated from both sides already. I don’t know if the news has been slow lately, or there aren’t enough national disasters, but this issue, (and I think you know the one I’m talking about!) seems to be in the news way longer than it should.

It got me thinking about the way people argue their point. When you really dig below the surface of most arguments, they aren’t really arguments at all. An argument, of course coming from the mathematical or logical term, where a set of facts is presented, and an argument is how you illustrate that one set of facts logically leads to another set of facts. All cats speak Spanish, here is a cat, therefore, this cat speaks Spanish. All people are smart, you are a person, therefore, you are smart.

But if you listen to most arguments, they are really just a collection of synonyms and examples of their beliefs, and not why their method is better for a certain application. And not only that, they are contests to see who can most forcefully present their set of beliefs and collection of synonyms. Who ever forcefully and relentlessly puts forth their opinions the strongest is usually the winner. Even in political debates, where you expect a high level of logical skills, they just present their opinions over and over again.

There have been many extended studies of primates, and you’d be surprised how similar they behave to humans. There was one famous book called “Chimpanzee politics” written by Frans de Waal, where he studied a group of chimps for two years. They exhibited intricate and detailed political maneuvering, social rules and etiquette, different strategies that they used to interact with each other based on the individuals social status and standing. It was really extraordinary how we are much more similar to our primate cousins than we think Sure we dress up in suits and use eloquent words, but are the intentions below our actions any different?

Some say they aren’t. Some will point out that there is only a two percent difference in our DNA. Others will point to the book “The Naked Ape,” by Morris. Some will use complex social theories to describe how we really are no different than monkeys, and that the whole of our culture, religion, art, music is nothing more than a complicated expression of our natural desires. Others even go so far as to say that we are completely bound by our primitive urges, that we cannot escape the need to beat our chests and proclaim ourselves better than the next guy.

I don’t think so. I think that despite the huge proclivity for humans to behave, in many ways, identical to apes and monkeys, we don’t have to. Sure we come pre-programmed with desire for food, safety, sex that manifests itself in the form of housing developments, insurance companies, and a plethora of sex related marketing tools, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Mother nature only wants us to live long enough to produce more people. And she, in her infinite wisdom, put in us the drives and desires necessary to be able to do that without ever having an original though or plan of action. We can go through life being a complete slave to our drives and desires and still do pretty good.

But the great part about being human is that we have choice. We can choose to obey our desires as if they are our gods, and that will be that. Or we can merely acknowledge and accept them as only a motivating factor to drive us towards the life that we want. We can choose the outcome we desire, and organize our lives around them, so that we are not slaves to our desires, but we can turn them around and allow our desires to power us and motivate us to achieve any result that we want. Of course, it’s not easy. Just look around you and you will see many examples of this. Fast food for out bodies and minds are in absolute abundance in our society. Resisting can be difficult, but not impossible. Any true reward can be a long time coming, but when it comes, it makes it all worthwhile.

The big difference between us and our monkey cousins, it that we can choose, and despite the ease with which we can forget that, we know this to be true. We know that the fully human life we deserve is only a choice away. A thought away.

The biggest promise of humanity is the simple ability to choose our thoughts. This has been known, written about, and passed down orally since the ancient times. But it’s not easy. Especially today with a bazillion things to snatch your attention from where you want it to be. Like everything, with practice it becomes easier. Those that know this secret, and practice it are the engineers of the society we live in. The rulers, the captains of industry and the politicians that presume to tell the rest of us how to live our lives. You don’t have to listen. Choose your own thoughts. Choose your own destiny. Start today. Now.

Break with Tradition and Choose Your Own Bliss

Once upon a time there was a young peacock, named Roberto. He was a happy peacock, he got enough food, and he had enough friends to play with. One of his favorite games to play with his friends was go see how close they could get to the alligators before running away. Because peacocks can’t fly, it was extremely fun to have to scurry quickly away before getting eaten by the alligator. They didn’t know anybody that had actually been eaten by the alligators, but they all heard of a friend of a next-door neighbors cousin that had tripped while running away, and had never been seen or heard from again. Perhaps this was just a story, or maybe there is some truth to this. Either way they were able to use this to have fun while playing and running away from the alligators.

Lately, though, the young peacocks were talking about a great big meeting of the adult peacocks. Apparently the men and the women would go and meet in a special place, and they would do some kind of secret adult peacock ritual thing, like church or something. The young peacocks didn’t really know what it was all about. And they were too scared to ask the peahens, because well, everybody knows that peacocks and peahens don’t hang out together. It just isn’t cool.

That’s when the rumors started. They said that when young peacocks turn into adults, their feathers change colors. And depending on how much their feathers change, they will become really popular, or not so popular, depending on the color. This caused a great deal of confusion among the young peacocks. Weren’t they already popular? Why did your feathers have anything to do with whether people liked you or not? Pretty soon the two groups, the young peacocks and the young peahens would gather. The peacocks were certain that the peahens were talking about them. They were always whispering and pointing and giggling.

Then one horrible day, young Roberto learned the terrible truth. His father took him aside, and told him how things really were.

“Son, some day you are going to grow some extra feathers. And if you grow really good feathers, you will be popular.”
Roberto gulped, too afraid to ask what would happen if he didn’t grow “really good feathers,” whatever that meant.
His father seemed to sense his apprehension.
“Don’t worry son, you’ll be fine. My father had good feathers, his father had good feathers, and my feathers aren’t too shabby. You’ll be allright.”
Young Roberto, however, wasn’t convinced.
“But what happens if I don’t?”
His father only stood, and walked away.

Three weeks later, Roberto noticed that his feathers were indeed changing. He rushed to meet his friends, some of them also had changing feathers, and some didn’t. They were all confused, and scared. The peahens continued to gather and giggle and point. With every passing day, Roberto and his friends grew more and more anxious. Then one night, he got up the courage to speak with his father.

“Why do they only care about feathers? Isn’t anything else important?” Roberto asked.
His father scratched his head.
“I don’t know son, that’s the way it’s always been.”
“But does it have to be that way?” Robert asked, sensing that his father didn’t have the answers he was looking for.
“I think it does. That’s the way it has always been.” He answered, sounding unsure of himself.
Roberto wasn’t convinced. At all.

The next day he decided to try something different. He gathered his friends, and his courage. He stood up to speak to them.

“Just because everybody before has only cared about feathers, doesn’t mean it has to be that way. You are more than your feathers. It doesn’t matter if your feathers are blue, or green, or the same stupid color as they are now. Who you are on the inside is more important. Your ideas and dreams and goals are what are important. If somebody thinks you are popular only because of your feathers, that’s their problem.”

The crowd of young peacocks was joined, for the first time, by a few brave peahens.

“You mean we can choose on something besides feathers?” A peahen asked.
“Yes!” Roberto answered, the crowd starting to cheer him.
“You can choose based on whatever you want! You don’t have to choose based only on what people before you chose!” The crowd cheered again, the young peahens now mingling with all the young peacocks. They mingled and talked and explored each other’s personalities. Everybody was happy. Everybody was popular, in their own way.

The adult peacocks watched in interest, as the young peacocks and peahens broke with tradition to their own delight and happiness.

“Can they do that?” One older peacock with large, fading red feathers asked.
“I guess they can.” Said another, with a dull set of yellow and oranges feathers, and a large grin on his face.
“I guess they can do whatever they want.” He added.

And from that day on, peacock feathers became only an interesting footnote in peacock history.

There is Magic Inside

I was walking down the street yesterday, minding my own business, like I normally do. Well, almost normally. Most of the time at least. And I passed by this very small flower shop. It was a flower shop that I had passed by several times before. I don’t know what it was that caused me to go inside. I certainly didn’t want to buy any flowers, as I wasn’t going anywhere that warranted a gift of flowers to anyone.

The first thing that struck me was just how large the flower shop seemed on the inside. From the outside, it looked like a small shop that could only hold maybe a few dozen arrangements. The front of the store was not that large, and on either side were rather looking storefronts, so you would never imagine what you could find inside until you really look. The first thing I was reminded of is the scene in Harry Potter (book four or five, I can’t remember) when he went to watch the world Quiddich Cup, and he went inside a tent set up by the Weasley’s. It was small on the outside, but enormous and filled with magic on the inside. That’s what this flower shop was like.

Inside were incredible arrangements of flowers I’d never even seen before. The colors were tantalizingly fantastic, and the way the proprietor had arranged them was absolutely breathtaking. I won’t even begin to try and describe it, because one, I only know the vocabulary of about six colors, and two, I only know the names of maybe three flowers. Bu suffice it to say that as soon as I went inside that shop, I started racking my brains for a reason to buy an arrangement or two and a reason to give them to somebody.

I started talking to the proprietor of the place. She had been in business for about ten years, all in the same shop. She had done several renovations to maximize the small space she had to work with, and the results spoke for themselves. She had originally been a high level executive assistant, pulling close to six figures a year (and that was over ten years ago,) but something about her job was less than satisfying. She wasn’t able to find happiness answering the needs of others. She was well respected, well liked, had enjoyed several promotions over the course of her career, but something was missing. She wasn’t able to choose her own direction.

So she looked around and found the flower shop for sale. She had always had a penchant for arranging things. But up until then, she had always been arranging things according to the criteria of other people. Like when you’ve had enough, and you need to choose things that are important to you. You feel a need to set your own course, and not have to follow the orders of others. You need to be yourself, whatever that may be. And she found it in this shop.

She said that at first the money was less than a quarter than she made before, but really enjoyed it. She could find ways to express her creativity in a way that gave her that special kind of satisfaction that you get when you do things your own way.

And of course, as time went on, and her shop became more and more successful, she started to earn more money than she did before. And not only that, but she is now able to set her own hours, choose her own arrangements, and feel really proud of her work.  Something she suspects never would have been possible before.

It’s kind of nice knowing that there are still people like this to model yourself after.

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The Sheepherder’s Discovery

As you sit there, and read this page, you might feel certain sensations in your body. Some of these sensations might be familiar, and some of them might be one’s that you’ve felt before. Either way, you can let these feelings remind you of those wonderful memories from before. You know the time I’m talking about. The time you had that experience, the one that made you feel just that way. And it doesn’t really matter if you can remember it completely; because one thing about experiences is that they are completely up to you to remember them any way you like that, right?

So as you let those thoughts that you are thinking circulate in your thought-sphere that exists some place in the realm of ideas, I’d like to borrow your attention for a few moments. Don’t worry; I’ll give it back when we’re finished here. Just relax, because you know that those experiences that you enjoy are really up to you to discover them here, now.

Once up a time there was a sheepherder. His job was to take his sheep from pasture to pasture, and let them graze. When the time came for him to sell their wool, he took them into town to the place that bought the wool. They would sheer the wool from the sheep, and take the wool to make various things. Clothing, blankets, rugs, and other things. The sheep were happy, because they didn’t really have to do much except eat, and get a haircut periodically. The sheepherder didn’t have an overly difficult job, because he just found natural grass for the sheep to eat, made sure the wolves stayed away, and had to find a market for the wool from time to time. All in all, it was a happy life for all of them.

As the character in most stories do, our sheepherder boy encountered a problem one day. He had grown bored with his sheep herding life. At first, when he first got into it, it seemed fantastic. Travel, no boss, make your own hours, it was a young man’s dream come true. But the more the years passed, the more he realized as he traveled from town to town that he was missing out on something. It seemed more and more apparent that the townspeople were enjoying a happiness that wasn’t available to him.

Despite his freedom and detachment from the world, he longed for human companionship. He longed for the touch of a woman, and the warmth of a fire in the fireplace of his own home, and the smell of fresh bread from his own kitchen.

But he didn’t want to lose his sheep. They had served him well over the years, and he couldn’t bring himself to just abandon them. So he decided to have a meeting with his sheep. He hired a sorcerer from a nearby town, as he would have to find a way to communicate his intentions to the sheep, and gauge their responses. The sorcerer claimed to have experiences in these matters. After a long discussion, he was convinced that the sheep would be able to govern themselves, and find their way into town to get their usual haircuts, as they’d been accustomed.

The sheepherder had agreed to take the profits generated by the self governing sheep, and set up a wolf free zone, so sheep could live in safe environment, free from predators. The money would be used to buy special minerals and mix them into a special recipe known only to the sorcerer, thereby keeping the wolves from encroaching on their territory.
When they had finished making the arrangements, everybody was happy.

The now ex-sheep herder boy set off to find the girl of his dreams, and start the exciting journey of his new life. As he was leaving, the sorcerer pulled him aside, to give him some last minute wisdom:

“Life is a long journey. It can be easy or hard, depending on what you make of it. You can find peace, or you can find pain. The greatest secret does not lie in how to get money or how to seduce the most beautiful daughter of a shopkeeper. Nor does it lie in conjuring magic to keep away the wolves. The secret lies in seizing your own power to choose. Once you fully realize that you have always had that magnificent power, the world becomes yours.”

The ex-sheep herder boy thanked him, and wandered off, open to the bliss that was in store for him, and you.

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Unconscious Guidance

The other day I was walking somewhere and got sidetracked. Has that ever happened to you? You will have this clear goal in mind, this clear outcome that you’ve decided is what you want to do. You set out to achieve this goal, sure that you will achieve it. But then something happens, and either because you didn’t allow yourself to see all the possibilities, or maybe your original goal was well formed enough, you just kind of end up in another place.

One way to get around this is to be aware of what your underlying intentions are. It helps to be able to dig deeper to find the real reason behind your goals. When you search beneath what is pretending to be the important part, you’ll be surprised to discover that many of your goals fall under the same basic categories. Safety, comfort, recognition, personal growth.

As I got off the streetcar (yes they have street cars where I live) I saw my goal in sight. The coffee shop where I had intended to relax and spend an hour or so writing in my journal. As it happened, the weather was particularly nice, and there were a fair number of people out and about. There is a street going just past that I’ve always kind of wondered about. There was a steady stream of people walking up this street, that looked as if they were going to some kind of event. You can sort of tell when people are going to find something special here. Because of the way they are dressed, many of them carrying water bottles, cameras, other things that make it appear as if they are on a mini-trek that might take a few hours.

But something funny happened. Usually when I’ve made a choice, (other than to wander around without a clear choice) and I see a distraction, I have at least a few moments of indecision. Should I go this way? What about my other plans? Which is better? Hmm. But not this time. My coffee shop plans instantly disappeared as I followed the crowd up the street. When I emerged back about two hours later, much richer for the experience, I never even gave my abandoned coffee shop plans a second thought.

If you are thinking this is completely platitudinous and futile, maybe you’re right. The thing that struck me was the speed at which I’d abandoned my coffee shop plans for an unknown trek up the street, merely using the crowd as my guidance. Which leads me to suspect that something told me that the underlying reason I wanted to hang out at the coffee shop would better be served by following the crowd up the street. On  an unconscious level, the change in plans didn’t even warrant a the token elevation into consciousness. My desire just shifted, without any conscious thought.

Maybe because I’ve been doing a lot of meditating lately, I was able to not need to question the greater wisdom of my unconscious. I just went with it, and had a much richer experience because of it. Of course I wasn’t doing brain surgery, or walking across a tightrope over the grand canyon, I was just wiling away a Sunday afternoon. But in that moment I experienced an unconscious guidance that I don’t usually experience.

Thank you unconscious, whatever you are. That was fun.

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Choose Your Thoughts, Choose Your Power

I was listening to a friend recently tell me about a rather unhappy experience he’d had recently. He was going to a local convenience store that he usually stops at on his way to work. He was wearing a t shirt with an emblem on the front that identified him with a particular movement that is both popular and unpopular at the same time. Those that agree with it’s philosophy are all for it, but those who don’t think twice about voicing their disagreement, as they feel that many will share their convictions.

So my friend walks into this convenience store, fills up his coffee, and is waiting in line to pay. The guy working behind the counter begins an open tirade against the organization on my friends t shirt. Now my friend was on his way to work, and only stopped in for a few minutes to grab a cup of coffee, so he wasn’t mentally prepared for any kind of debate. And as luck would have it, everyone else in the store seemed to be in agreement with the worker behind the counter. So my friend, who was only expecting to buy a cup of coffee, found himself surrounded by people that had no problem ridiculing him for what he believed in.

Keep in mind that the organization that he supports is a mainstream organization with a large percentage of the population on the same page. It’s not like he was advertising kiddie porn or something on his t-shirt.

He was totally taken aback, both by the fact that he was suddenly surrounded by detractors who through their apparent agreement didn’t feel any reason to hold back, and that the instigator was working in a large chain convenience store, where one would expect at least a surface level of professionalism.

Now my friend is an avid meditator. He told me that after the situation began, he stopped, took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled. He did this a couple of times, and focused on his purpose. Enter shop. Buy coffee. Leave shop. He told me that after only a few breaths, he was able to feel centered, and allow the people the luxury of expressing their opinions. They weren’t going to harm him, they didn’t have guns or knives, they were just capitalizing on the fact that they had him outnumbered, at least with respect to the opinion suggested by the organization on his t-shirt.

I asked him how he specifically practices to be able to get to that level of uninsultability, and he says it’s simple. All you do is exhale all your breath, wait until you feel the desire to breath, and then breath in slowly while feeling appreciation for your breath above all else. Then when you fill your lungs, you hold that appreciation in your mind to the exclusion of all other thoughts. He said that it takes practice, but once you develop a habit of breathing this way for a few minutes every day, you will train your brain in powerful ways. You will train your brain to “detach” from automatically reacting to the world around you. Instead, you will learn to see and hear the events around you, and then have the presence of mind to choose how to respond.

It all sounds very esoteric and zen like, but it really is just practicing a behavior that you want to get better at. Nothing different than practicing a golf swing or your tennis back hand. You are practicing withholding any thought other than the appreciation of your own breath in your own lungs.

And from that space between outside reality and your choice of thought, comes incredible power and resourcefulness. Not a bad skill to have, if you ask me.

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The Urge to Increase Your Choice

Men and women throughout time have struggled to make sense of life. What is the reason behind the seemingly constant struggle? Why must we continue to do the same things over and over while paradoxically staying in the same place? I’m sure you’ve felt that way from time to time. Get up in the morning. Go to work, go through a days work, with as little trouble as possible. Come home, perhaps stopping at the gym on the way home, or perhaps the corner bar or other place to relax and unwind. The next day, you do the same thing.

I was finishing up a workout once, and a guy with a particularly well defined body which indicated the amount of effort he’d put into it, said

“Well, go home force myself to eat healthy food, watch TV, fall asleep, wake up, go to work come back here, work out, take a shower, and do it all over again.”

There is a character in Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland called the red queen. She tells Alice that in order to stay in place, you have to keep running.
But does it have to be that way? Do you have to do the same thing day in, day out, on some path that you chose how many years ago? Is that the meaning of life? To struggle through elementary school, junior high school, university if that’s your thing, then as Bob Dylan said “twenty years of schoolin and they put you on the day shift.”

It doesn’t have to be that way. One of the reasons humans have catapulted themselves to the front of the line in the race of evolution is our adaptability. The beauty of mother nature is that we can go through life completely oblivious to the idea of having a choice and still manage to have a successful career and family, and produce more copies of ourselves. Which is all mother nature really cares about. She gave us the internal drives and desires that are strong enough so that even if try and ignore them, they will drive us forward. For most of human history, these basic urges have drove humanity to build cities, cathedrals, beautiful works of art.

But what happens when you examine your urges? What happens when instead of blindly following these to eat, make money, have sex, build a family, you not only accept these urges as a natural part of you, but channel them, even harness them, to help you create the life that you want?

What would that be like?

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