Removing Impact Blinders Archives - Page 26 of 26

Questionable Authority

July 11, 2013 by costaricaguy 2 Comments

The great Louis C.K. does this outrageous and thought-provoking routine where he presents authoritative (or settled) propositions and then he contrasts them with “but maybe” scenarios that question their validity. The ones he uses are mostly absurd (and borderline offensive), but the overall point is a good one.

We should question authority….

Following along the lines of Louis, I will submit some other seemingly settled propositions that could be questioned…

1. Of course citizens should pledge allegiance to a flag…BUT MAYBE doing so means saying it’s OK for one nation on earth to be responsible for the most mayhem (in terms of death and destruction) of any nation that ever existed (be it Russia, Germany or even the U.S.A.)?

2. Of course we should “support the military” (as every aspiring politician will quickly remind us)…BUT MAYBE doing so means giving approval to an institution whose primary goal is to teach young mean and women how to kill and blow things up?

3. Of course capitalism is the best economic and social system, BUT MAYBE it is also the one that is most responsible for the growing income gap between the richest and poorest that threatens social order throughout the globe?

4. Of course the “American Dream” is something every young adult should aspire to, BUT MAYBE it means that doing so equates to spending the majority of your time on earth in pursuit of a higher level of consumption…one that the planet simply can no longer sustain?

There are some posts that are easy for me to hit the “publish” key.

This ain’t one of them.

I have watched with rapt amazement as the Arab Spring begins to unravel and unfold into the Arab Winter of Discontent in Egypt. But one thing that all the upheavals in the Middle East have taught us is that authority can and will be questioned. Because every human has the right to do so. It might mean torture or even death to do so, but you still can. And sometimes, should.

Here’s a tweetable for ya…

All authority elevated by man above men is questionable and should be questioned, and to the extent it deems itself not, then all the more.

The Ultimate Life Hack

April 30, 2013 by costaricaguy 4 Comments

I am a Seth Godin fan. I never miss a blog post and have read most of his books. Currently I am reading The Icarus Deception. Seth doesn’t write for normal people. His stuff is for the outliers, the weird ones…..like me!

I also peruse the blog, Life Hacker, on a regular basis. Sometimes you can pick up some useful advice there, such as how to avoid crushing your thumb with a hammer by using, of all things, bobby pins (who would’ve thought?). However, most of what Life Hacker teaches us is about how to be more efficient, save time, be more productive and profitable…..very industrial age kind of thinking using very modern tools. Godin’s advice flies in the face of all of that. I believe it may contain the seeds to the most ultimate life hack of all.

When was the last time you felt like an artist? I remember my mom used to actually frame and hang my first and second grade art in the house. I was an artist. But as the years flew by something happened. The artist in me suffocated via the need to conform to what the world expected of me. To be a cog in the machinery (admittedly, a somewhat rebellious cog).

The artist in me suffocated via the need to conform to what the world expected of me.

But deep inside that longing toward artistry has lingered. And it still does to this day. That’s where Godin comes in loud and clear. Godin says that the industrialized age is dying. I believe he is right. It served us well in times of war and the aftermath, when the nation needed to be driven by a common goal. But now, not so much. So, where does that leave us?

Godin says, and I do believe, it leaves us, or leads us, with/to art. Godin is not necessarily talking art in the Picasso sense, but in the sense of doing those things that make us more human and connect and appeal to us as humans. Because the truth is (and always was) we are not cogs. We are unique. We are different. We are art that is given the capacity to replicate what it is that we are. Godin’s inspiring premise is that we all have the capacity to do something that connects (art) and now the ability to actually connect (to ship) has never been easier (and it keeps getting better).

We are art that has been given the capacity to replicate what it is that we are.

It’s hard to wipe away all those years of conformity and become an artist again. It feels confusing, scary and makes one feel vulnerable. But in doing so we might find the true secret to lasting contentment and fulfillment.

That would seem to be a life hack worth implementing.

image credit: Ben Heine via Compfight cc

Compassion

April 24, 2013 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

Passion can move you forward. Compassion will move you upward. I glanced at someone’s wall post from my Facebook feed this morning. The jest of it was a reaction to someone who had stupidly and indeed criminally hit a small child at a school bus stop and then kept on driving. Specifically the post commented that this person should never get out of jail. Really? What if it was an accident and the person was too scared to stop? Too scared to face the consequences? Have you ever been there? Have you ever tried to hide from the consequences of your actions because you knew that the pain of bearing them would be almost intolerable (it never is, but we often rationalize it so)? I have. When you begin to put the shoe on the other foot, your foot, compassion becomes a bit more natural doesn’t it?

Passion can move you forward. Compassion will move you upward.

I have unfortunately witnessed too often the “christian” attitude of compassion extending only so far as one’s ranking of the severity of the sin. If it passes a certain threshold of nastiness, compassion tends to be left by the wayside. But in all honestly we must be thankful that the author and finisher of the faith didn’t take the same approach. His compassion knew no such thresholds, now did it?

I have unfortunately witnessed too often the “christian” attitude of compassion extending only so far as one’s ranking of the severity of the sin.

Now we have the difficult situation of the Boston Marathon bomber. A nineteen year-old, who by all accounts seems to be a pretty normal kid. He really screwed up now didn’t he? People got hurt. Innocent people. 8-year old innocent people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time…the finish line of the Boston Marathon. So, can we find compassion in the face of a brutal act of terrorism against us, against ours? Hard stuff, huh?

My post this morning began with two statements and I believe them to be true. We say (I say) an awful lot about passion. How it is the key to success. Discover your passion! Live with passion! And so on. Yea that stuff is all well and good. It can actually work. The more passionate we are the better results we usually achieve. We can move forward on that vehicle.

But is that all this life is about? Moving forward? Achieving? Making it big? Living that life of our dreams? We all want that. I want that. But is that really what it is all about? I don’t think so….I hope not.

When I say compassion moves us upward I am not consciously speaking in religious terms. But nevertheless “compassion” is intertwined with spirituality. We exercise it not for any particular quid pro quo, but because it just feels like the right thing to do. It is associated with something I would tend to call “the greater good.” Passion just doesn’t get us to that point, but Com-passion does. Maybe that is why religion gives us the greatest example of it.

That should tend to raise its level of importance a bit, don’t you think?

Putting Why into Words

February 24, 2013 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

Just finished Simon Sinek’s Start with Why. Great book by the way and highly recommended for anyone who can read (and if you can’t, there’s an audible version too!). However, I will have to admit that now that I have read the book, I am more confused than ever. But as Tony Robins used to say in his seminars, if you feel confused, rejoice, you’re close to a breakthrough. Sinek even tells us straight up that answering “the why” question is extremely difficult. It is difficult because the answer is buried deep within our limbic brains. That is the part of the brain that governs motivation and emotion, but has no capacity for language. It is where the why resides, but it does not provide the capacity of putting the why into words.

Yet, we need to put it into words. So Sinek’s book has sparked a struggle to do just that. Actually, I have struggled in the past with things like mission and vision statements, or statements of life’s purpose. I actually have one that I created during the Anthony Robbins, Date with Destiny seminar in Miami, Florida back in, what, I believe 2000? But the problem with those “statements” is that I believe they rarely ever get at the true why. They are usually more in line with the hows and whats, but not the whys.

What was particularly thought provoking towards the end of the book was the chapter on the Origins of Why, where Sinek compares metaphorically the process of getting to why with the English longbow, which must be pulled back in order to have the momentum to do the damage needed going forward. In other words, our whys are buried in the past. Yea Yea, I know I have been fond of using the phrase in this blog that “the past does not equal the future.” And it doesn’t. We certainly shouldn’t allow whatever has occurred in the past to limit our futures. But what we are talking about here is something that is buried in our brains and the reason it got there in the first place has everything to do with our past.

So this morning as I closed the book (or shut down the IPad), I began the process of thinking through how the past events of my life have shaped my why. Because, as I sit here this morning I still really can’t seem to find the capacity to rationally express, in cogent fashion, what the hell my why is. And it is frustrating. Why have I taken the actions over the course of my life that I have taken? More often than not, those actions have been driven by how or what. Such as how do I use this law degree to provide for my family and what job offer will I take to provide a practical platform to do just that. But leading with hows and whats generally means settling for something that is just not in line with why.

Leading with hows and whats generally means settling for something that is just not in line with why.

And that is where dissatisfaction and disillusionment usually begin to set in. Or, even worse, despair and depression, which ultimately lead to poorer decisions in the vain attempt to get those “monkeys” off our backs (so we just end up replacing them with others). When all the while, if we just knew why and could actually communicate it to ourselves and others, our lives could finally make sense. We could finally achieve the momentum to do some real damage (in the positive sense).

So I encourage you (as well as me) to (1) read the book and then (2) spend some serious soul searching time putting why into words. It may make all the difference in finally getting the ladder leaning on the right wall.

A Signal in the Noise

February 22, 2013 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

I hate clutter, including the clutter that often exists between my own two ears. A house full of clutter is distracting to me. There are many examples of my clutter-phobia. For instance, I cannot cook if the kitchen is not spotless before I begin. Just having dirty dishes laying around makes the experience of cooking one more of disgust than delight. And I do love to cook…..albeit, in a clean kitchen. I marvel at those who can get any work done with a desk that is piled to the ceiling with papers that probably should have been tossed years before. I just find it much more liberating to work via a clean desk with only essential items thereupon. Maybe I am weird that way, but I don’t like clutter.

Having set that stage, I must go on to say that my life is full of clutter. Maybe that is why I often feel extremely anxious. The clutter I am now speaking of isn’t the kind that exists on a desk, or in a kitchen (those magnets of clutter are easy enough to clean out). I am talking about the clutter of the past. Those consequences of past poor decisions that linger on. Problems that you wish would go away but never do. I made a list of those the other day and I will have to say, cleaning out that clutter is gonna take some doing. It won’t be easy, but I believe it is essential for me to be free from the constraints of clutter.

Because clutter really does constrain. It creates noise. And to borrow a phrase from the wise folks at 37signals (and their blog, Signal Vs. Noise), it is very hard to detect the signal in the noise. What signal you ask? Well I guess I mean those insights that sometimes lead to great leaps forward. The more clutter you have around you in your physical world, as well as internal mental state, the less likely you are to perceive those insights. One habit that I am trying to develop to clear the clutter is meditation. Now I am not one of those who believe mediation is the path of enlightenment and salvation. I don’t take it that seriously. But it is a great practice that once you get the hang of (and believe me it takes some practice), can help you detect those signals drowned out in the noise of past and present existence.

The more clutter you have around you in your physical world, as well as internal mental state, the less likely you are to perceive those insights.

If you’re gonna try it here is my advice (or, what works for me).

1. Do it early in the morning when the sounds that are most prevalent are only those of nature. Nature doesn’t seem to present noise, as does everything else. Even though here in Costa Rica every morning nature presents a veritable symphony of sound, there is something calming and focusing about it. At least for me.

2. Do it sitting in an upright position on something soft and comfortable, but don’t get too comfortable, or you will fall asleep (and sleeping doesn’t count). I use the lotus sitting pose, but it certainly is not some sort of spiritual requisite.

3. Breath uniformly and deeply. Just the very fact of breathing this way has health benefits and can get the day started right for you.

4. Keep the eyes closed and focus on your breath. I like to pause at the top of each breath (the inhale) for a moment and then at the bottom (the exhale). Just the mere fact of consciously doing that helps keep the mind on the breath and not wandering about aimlessly.

5. However, your mind will wander. And when it does, don’t judge yourself (and don’t quit). Just gently bring it back to the breath every time it drifts off. Getting good at focusing the mind on the breadth is the hardest part, but the one with the most benefits.

6. Use an interval timer. Many can be downloaded to IPhones or IPads (just Google “meditation timer”).

7. Start out with a reasonable amount of time. Maybe 15 minutes. You can increase as you feel comfortable.

8. Do it every day. That is essential to making it a habit and getting the most out of it. Also, it helps instill the habit of rising early because without a doubt that is the best time of the day to do it.

I have tried various meditation techniques over the years, such as guided meditation and visualization. However, I believe the simple technique described above works best. Try it and maybe those signals will start coming through the noise of your life a little clearer.

photo credit: Dmitry Rostovtsev via Compfight cc

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