could have been

Melody Jones and George Fury, two down on their luck busted up old broncobusters, rode into Payneville. The townsfolk thought Melody Jones was the notorious murderer Monte Jarrad and got out of his way wherever he went.

By the time Melody left town that day everything had changed for him, he had a taste of being a different man and he liked it. He thought people should treat him that way from then on. He just didn’t know what to do to make it happen.

don't notice

Tolstoy’s War and Peace contains a fine Zen parable. Briefly: Napoleon invades Russia, is beaten back and retreats across the frozen countryside. Our hero, Pierre, a Russian nobleman, lands in a French POW camp where he hears a peasant singing to himself and is struck by the simple beauty of his song. The song is natural like that of a bird in the forest. A bird doesn’t change its song because someone is listening. It’s too busy singing to notice it has an audience. Tobias Hurwitz, June issue of Guitar Player

road trip

One of the good things about being on a list/serve is that you get links to sites that you might not find on your own.

Here is one.

will

I'm having my nightly stare down with Snickers where I say No No No.

I was about to write that it looked like tonight was my turn to win because she was diving into the folds of the bed spread but she came back out and she is testing my will again.

She is easy to please, a couple of milk bones, a raw hide chew and a drink of cold water out of a glass just like daddy is all she wants.

I'm with holding the chews for a while, she cut her gums on one last night. She didn't seem to mind but I had to pull the sheets and run them through the laundry.

Staying up for that chore wouldn't have been so bad but this morning some yahoo stopped in front of the house and laid on his horn for a bit. Seems a duck was in the street and he was trying to direct it back to the water. I'm glad he just didn't run it over like some people would but the horn at eight in the morning just ten yards from my window was a bit too much.

I was so shocked after just four hours sleep that I jumped out of bed, got dressed and ran outside to get the paper and to show that duck which way to go. I got the paper but never saw the duck.

some more of this and that

I should make this a daily feature.

I browse with Firefox so I don't have any issues with pop up ads but I noticed a friend of mine going through a bunch of them today. I asked him where they came from and he said they started popping up when he went to the Rational Simplicity link I had posted. I'm going to start up that clunky old Internet Explorer to check this out, if I get a bunch of them here at home I will remove the link from my posting.

I watched the wrong races Sunday! I watched two rounds of World Superbike when I could have been watching the F1 Grand Prix. I guess I really missed out on some good action there.

I haven't shot any pictures in two weeks or more. Sometimes I just don't know what is wrong with me.

I have to remove one of my ludite badges soon. I've made a defensive move and bought a cell phone for an added degree of protection. This is a result of my misadventures with that Nissan Hardbody a few weeks ago. I've had the thing for almost a week now and still haven't activated it.

Here is the place to go if you are a photographer like me and want to see some great technical work. If that doesn't interest you then perhaps you should know that it is the gateway to a collection of Playboy centerfolds. I suppose there is a similar site for Playgirl but I'm not looking for it.

this and that

Well I've been pretty busy and haven't been keeping up with my writing so this is just a quick update on this and that.

Part 2 is coming.

Snickers has been sick but now she is on medication like the rest of America and everything is going to be okay.

I am reminded this week of the advantages of being a life long bachelor.

I will write more about UFC fights that I see. I really like them and there are readers hungry for information on them.

I have not found my stalker but I am still looking.

The PYTP work outs really feel great! I feel like they are really doing something for me.

I'll be doing some more mind map work as soon as I can.

My older brother used to read this blog often but since he came to Ohio for a visit I have hardly seen him here at all.

Some reader needs to harass me to make sure I get my bikes up and running and start putting in the miles while the sun is shining.

I've started to wear a hat recently.

The book I am reading now is Soul Sword by Vernon Kitabu Turner. I started on page 76.

My neighbor told me that he and his family were going to use their lakefront home more often this summer and since he owned most of the space between the two houses he wanted to park there, I could park across the street in the public lot. That was five weeks ago and I haven't seen him since.

I had a problem with the ignition lock in the Mercedes so I bought a new one to fix it per the advice of everyone on the mail list for these cars. It didn't fix it.

rational simplicity

Here is Tim Covell's site on Rational Simplicity.

There is a lot written here about the idea of simple living. Good advice.

The site has that simple charm of a do it your self project. He just needs to add his name to his articles.

part one

Can you hear the rain falling?

Between what you wish you were and what you fear you are is the place you’re at now. Sometimes it is a bright shiny movie flashing before your eyes and sometimes it is a stinking wall of darkness squeezing the life out of you. One moment you think you have it all worked out and the next moment you’re wondering what you’ve done. One day you are young with all the time in the world and the next moment your vigor is gone and you can see that the road ends.

This is how it goes when you let life happen to you.

All the world may be a stage but there really isn’t an audience, just and endless cast of players who think the spotlight is on them.

It isn’t.

Almost everyone plays their part by default, repeating lines spoken before, repeating actions played before.

Almost everyone ends up the same, nearly forgotten and then completely forgotten. I think of my own father who did not complete sixty-three years on this planet. He grew up in New York City, served in the Army Air Corps during World War Two and spent thirty years in Columbus yet I don’t think I can find twenty-five people who remember him.

It’s a good thing that all of this is a mystery to most folks, as it would shatter their conception of reality if they had to face it.

Facing it is a blessing for a few, most of whom do not appreciate it.

Facing it happens in a cracked fraction of time that you never counted on, a moment of opportunity, an instant when the next page of your script is blank. Those who do not appreciate it try to shake it off and get back into the play as if nothing happened.

They are running on automatic.

A few stop and ask themselves why, why am I reading lines that have been read before? Why don’t I write my own lines? Why don’t I create a better role for myself?

These hard questions go frustratingly unanswered for most of us. Even if an answer is found it may be lost again on second thought. A second thought is the hook that pulls you back onto the stage. The world does not want you to find your place, it wants you in the place it chose for you.

When the opportunity to get off the stage comes around it is more likely to be a punch in the gut rather than a knock on the door.

Just such a punch began the story we are writing now.

rainy day

It's a rainy day here in Ohio and I have just turned the PC on, I skipped it this morning as there was lightning in the area. I've lost hard drives to electrical disturbances before and do not want that to happen again.

This week I've been writing about Mind Maps, a handy tool for organizing ones thoughts. This tool is like many others, it is only as good as the person who wields it. I think you need to practice mind mapping to reap the full benefits, casual dallience will not do.

I'm running out of time just now, I have to go to work soon, so I am just going to link to The Mind Map Book by Tony Buzan for today. This page has over 60 reviews earning a 3 and 1/2 star rating. Why so low? Looks like someone doesn't like the idea and made a point of posting multiple reviews panning the book.

There are legitimate criticisms of some of the hype in the book. What counts is the method that the book teaches and what you make of it yourself.

think and grow rich

It's almost hard to believe that a book first published in 1937 would be in continuous publication through today and harder still to believe that it is at #150 on the Amazon.com sales rank.

Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill is the book and you should have a copy of it.

I could talk this book up quite a bit but if you just click on the link you will find over 250 reviews by people who can't say enough good things about this book.

Get a copy as soon as you can.

start with paint

Here is something I threw together in Microsoft Paint. All the little picture are available in the fonts Webdings and Wingdings.

life mind map

A back ground for a life mind map I did a few years ago.

mind map back ground

One of my back ground drawings for my life mind map.

mind map search

I searched through Google images last night for the term 'mind map.'

I looked at the thumbnails of 400 mind maps and was amazed at how uncreative a lot of them were. In a lot of cases they were just outlines that branched left and right, up and down.

These are mind maps posted on the web often by businesses or schools to illustrate a project or to show people how to study.

On the other hand your first mind maps shouldn't be a work of art, in fact most of them shouldn't be works of art. It is, after all, a tool. There is a little map below that is a 'to do map.' It is a nice place to start mind mapping and I think it beats to do lists all day long.

There can be a lot of categories of mind maps, you can chunk them up and down when you do them. My back ground drawing is for a life map and I'll explain it more in another post.

I have to stop just now, I need to take Snickers to the doctor.

mind map art

Here is a mind map back ground I did a few years ago in Microsoft Paint. It's a little rough looking because it was smaller than it appears here.

I had a list of eight points I wanted to include but I didn't write all of them down on this one. I'll explain it some more in another post.

my pyramid

I was hoping to voice an opinion of the new food pyramid today but it is going to take a little bit of time to figure it all out. The USDA actually expects us to do a little bit of work for ourselves on this one.

I do think that is great, people should have a little education about their diets and the foods available.

There is more to it than driving up to a speaker and saying "I would like a number 6 combo meal please. I'd like large fries and a coke with that."

mind maps

I'm going to work on mind maps for the next few days, they can be really interesting.

I like to think of them as a good basis for art to hang on your wall. Do a mind map of your values, fill it in with representative objects, remove the words you started with and turn those objects into a landscape. Voila! You have some art to hang on your wall, but only you will know its true meaning.

Here is a values and principles mind map that is out on the web.

Here is a mind map that can help you get started in mind mapping. (journalism 101)

Here is another one from the same place.

Tomorrow I'll post some background art that I worked on a few years ago for my own mind maps.

You can also use the mind maps link on the right if your interested in getting started now.

food pyramid

The USDA has seen the light and revised the food pryamid again

Check it out here.

mind map practice

It's almost silly.

But for practice I'm doing little mind maps of the things I want to get done before going to work.

You can draw the images or you can find them on the web.

This is for today.

welcome back

This blog has received no random visits at all in three weeks!

I have written to blogger a bunch of times about this problem but no one actually bothers to answer my questions.

Nevertheless it looks like they may fixed the problem and made this a public blog again and I am glad of it.

I write about self development so check out my archives if your interested.

Thanks for visiting and welcome back.

solutions

Chuck Norris was having dinner with Bruce Lee one night, he asked him how he was able to keep stress from upsetting him.

"I have a system of ridding my mind of negative thoughts," replied Bruce. "I visualize myself writing them down on a piece of paper. Then I imagine myself crumpling up the paper, lighting it on fire, and burning it to a crisp. It may seem silly, but the system works, at least for me."

Chuck has taken Bruce's system one step further. He actually writes down on a scrap of paper whatever negative thoughts that he has and then burns them. When he disposes of the ashes, the thoughts, too, are removed from his mind. He lets them go.

From The Secret Power Within by Chuck Norris

use it

"I want to be thoroughly used up when I die . . . for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candleto me. It is sort of a splendidtorch, which I've got a hold of for the momentand I want to make it burn as brightly as possiblebefore handing it on to future generations." George Bernard Shaw

If I get on a motorcycle and ride like hell all year long I will have some work to do on the bike in short order. You see, unlike the human body, a machine is not self repairing.

If you exercise, properly, you will get better and better. IT WORKS!

Use that body don't just sit and let it deteriorate.

a simple step

Today you take a simple step forward towards change, you write a list.

Today you write a list of the things you should do today. Doesn't really matter if you weren't planning on this, write them down anyway.

The simple act of writing down the things you should be doing will begin to train your mind to want to do these things.

So write down, by hand, the things you know you should do today, it will only take you one minute. You can spare one minute, can't you?

So if you should be drinking water today, write it down.
If you should be eating leafy green vegetables today, write it down.
If you should be exercising today, write it down.
If you should cut the grass today, write it down.

Write down everything you should do today, even something as simple as calling a family member to see how they are doing.

Write down that you want to read so many pages in the book you have now.
Write down all the little things you know you should be doing. All the little things that don't get done everyday.

Write it down.

Tomorrow, write it all down again.

I splurged

I splurged last night on UFC 52. Had to see it, HAD to.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship is a mixed martial arts competition, which means they kick, punch and wrestle. It is taking the lead in combat sports, goodbye rasslin, goodbye boxing.

I don't need to talk about rasslin, its sports entertainment, lots of fun sometimes but no new ground left to tread.

Boxing could be great but there are so many crooks trying to get a piece of the pie, and there always have been, that it just sucks.

The UFC has risen to the top, broken through, king of the hill. Everyone will be watching from now on so get on the band wagon.

The big event was the championship match up of Randy Coutour vs. Chuck Liddell in the light heavyweight division. I was rooting for Coutour, he's older. He got knocked out!

Nevertheless at nearly 42 he looked great. I have found no mention of his training methods on the web but the announcer said he was very strict in his eating habits.

That is something we should try, being very strict in our eating habits.

eight

Eight posts today and not one reader found this blog.

Blogger isn't working for me.

morris garages goodby

As I wrote this morning about a failed company reaching its zenith sometime in the past I was unaware that the same story was playing out at that very moment.

Rover MG is closing in Britain. They borrowed to make it through the past week but it looks today like the jig is up.

This is the last British car manufacturer owned by the British.

It is reported that workers are taking their tools home today, a "sure sign of a factory dieing."

This is really a shame. My brother and I owned about five British sports cars when we were young, enjoyed all of them. Jaguar, Triumph, MG and I had friends with British sports cars too.

writing this morning

I sat right down this morning to write a string of articles not because anything was on my mind but because Blogger is broken and it isn't getting fixed.

If I write six or seven posts over the course of a few hours someone should find them by using the Next Blog button. I used to get random readers this way all of the time. Some of those readers would go on to be regular readers, that's the way it's supposed to work.

For the last two weeks I haven't had any random readers at all! My blog is set for the public but it isn't acting that way. I've written to Blogger a number of times but nothing happens.

I'm planning to start a new blog this spring and Blogger is working itself out of my plans. I expect to have more readers with my new blog because I am going to advertise.

Policy Analysis Market

Go to The Conspiracy to keep you Poor and Stupid to see an interesting take on the Policy Analsis Market.

The article gives you an idea of what's wrong with the mainstream media today.

zenith

I have a small fascination with the failure of business.

Weather it be a failed gas station or Enron, I'm interested.

For example when I moved from Columbus to the lake there was a small Sinclair gas station on a nearby road. It was already closed then but the building and the pumps were still there. Today even those are gone.

This little station looked to be from the forties, it was little more than a shed. I always think that in the history of a failed business there was one day when it made more money than any other day. It reached a zenith and could not maintain it. This particular station probably failed when the interstate came along, one half mile north of the location.

If I wasn't determined to give up on collecting things I would be buying old stock certificates of failed companies. They often proudly show a powerful factory in full production, a factory that is closed or even gone today.

When I was a kid I went to the Timken plant that my dad worked at a number of times. The place was full of lathes turning bearings for the railroad. It is just a big patch of concrete on the ground today. All that machinery is gone and everything is torn down.

I always glance at the old Seagraves Fire Engine plant when I drive by it in Columbus. It is just about as it was sixty years ago. You can look at an old engraving on a stock certificate and look at the actual plant still today. Closed and empty it isn't as impressive.

Here is a short article at Robert Musil's blog about a new book on the Enron disaster. Seems the story is changing from what was originally being reported a few years ago.

I can't write about this without mentioning one of my favorite stories, When Genius Failed, The Rise and Fall of Long Term Capital Management. The story of the catastrophic failure of a bond trading firm, a failure so large that it could have damaged the whole economy if not for the intervention of the New York Fed, every major U.S. bank and some foreign ones and the stock exchange.

Remember, the next time you go by a closed business, pause and think for a moment that at one time it reached a zenith of activity, a day when it looked like it could go on forever. Pause and think about what went wrong, think about what happened, think about how a lot of smart people failed to change.

complacent?

One reason we fall into an ever declining state of disrepair is that we are naturally complacent.

This comes to mind while reading this article.

If you are still using Internet Explorer then you are complacent.

When are you going to do something about it?

google

Google saves a page on the net for their future philanthropic efforts. Bookmark it for it is the dawn of the realization of a dream.

Here it is.

self mastery

Difficult to understand, self is not objective, not what you have done in your life.

Self is not about what you have or what you do, however important either one is to you.

Not about what you think you need to do, not what you think someone else needs to do.

Self is not about how someone else reacts to your ideas, your opinions, your car, your home, your face, your body.

Self is about being.

Be what you are, what you choose.

Move through the world as you are and that is mastery.

When you react to action outside your self you have not yet mastered your self.

Outside influences must flow around you first, without effect.

When you can work in your cubicle and not hear anything going on around you except for someone talking to you then you have freed your self from a static frustrating connection to the world.

I am not self mastered.

Meet one here.

repent brother

Where is Clarence Oddbody when you need him?

Show me what I could have been. I'm not worried about what things would have been like if I wasn't here. I'm not planning on going anywhere.

Clarence Oddbody wait for me on the bridge like you did for George Bailey. I need your help, I have friends who need your help and lots of us need your help. Show us what our lives can be like if we put our minds to it.

It's past time to have remorse over what we have done. We must put things right! We must make a change for the better. We must stop wasting our precious present.

I remember

I had three really good ideas for articles yesterday.

Unfortunately they washed away in the detritus of thought that flows over us all of the time.

Why did I let that happen? I had pen and paper with me and I could have stopped to scribble them down when they came my way. It's almost criminal, some people never get inspired and creative thoughts at all and here I am letting them escape.

It's like mom telling me to eat my peas back in the sixties, "Don't you know there are people starving in China?" I need moms voice in my head now telling me to "Write it down son, don't you know there are people starving for good content?" Well, maybe she wouldn't say that, but I can imagine.

Of course it doesn't need to be mom's voice, it can be my own. I hear that works pretty well too, a voice in your head carrying on a monolougue all of the time. Oh, that's called thinking.

Now thinking comes naturally to most people although we all know someone who is a failure at it. Did you know that you can plan your own thinking, it's called 'self-talk' and I'm sure there are a lot of web sites that talk about it. The deal is that you write out a monologue to plant in your mind to help you do what you want to do. It takes the place of thought that have been holding you back. So instead of thinking 'I can't do this' or 'I don't like to exercise' you think 'Yes I can do this' and 'I love to exercise.'

The method is pretty simple, write out a monologue on how you want to be thinking, tape it on a cassette and listen to it. Your own voice will be implanted in your head, and that is the voice that the mind always wants to believe. It actually works too, which is a bonus considering all of the things that people sell you that don't really work.

I'll find a link to post in the side bar for self talk.

In the mean time I hear a voice in my head telling me to, what's that? Oh, okay, yea I'll do it.

Put the clothes in the dryer.

break

I haven't gotten any random hits on this blog in almost two weeks. I have made it a non public blog for the moment and will go public again in a couple of days. Hope that resetting cures what ever is the matter with blogger.

In the meantime I am not going to post anything new for a day or two.

To tide you over I'll give you a link to Napoleon Hill's Points to Ponder.

Print it out and use it while you work on your values and goals.

10 books

I mentioned in one of my articles that a handful of books could provide a lifetime of work for someone shaping their own life.

It is about time that I make such a list available. However I am going to leave it incomplete so that readers can enter some nominations themselves.

Here are a few I recomend with links to Amazon.

The Powermind System: Twelve Lessons on the Psychology of Success by Michael Monroe Kiefer

This is a practical book first and foremost. It isn't a motivator and it doesn't try to be. Most self improvement books tell lots of stories of people and the success they enjoy when they practice the lessons in the book. You will find a reviewer calling this book derivative, well everyone who writes on this subject is derivative including me. The reason for this is that we have only the same tools to work with, the tools that work. The only reason to write about the tools is to get people to use them.

The classics, I don't need to write about them, you should just have them.
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

In creating a list of only ten books there isn't room for all of the great self improvement books and the other books that provide needed instructions for life, so here are a few off the wall choices.

Nonviolent Communication byMarshall B. Rosenberg
Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, M.D.
Pushing Yoursel to Power by John E. Peterson
10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management by Hyrum W. Smith
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Simple Living by Georgene Lockwood

Gee, that makes eight and I can think of more than two I would like to add so I guess this short list will be longer than ten.
Please take a moment and add some suggestions of your own.

It's a bright sunny day here in Ohio and I've got a few things to do before I go to work so goodby for now and please come back soon.

hunting

I suppose something about the incident injured my pride.

It certainly was a wake up call. I am not prepared to handle everything that life throws at me.

Being prepared takes practice. So it is practice I must have.

The incident is Thursday night's stalking. I was followed by someone, I don't know who and I don't know why. Read about it in my short story last week.

I do know that I will respond differently, forcefully, if it happens again.

It is human nature to always think of ones self as young even as the joints begin to creek, the hair turns color and the weight adds up. Nevertheless when you are still big and strong it is surprising to find out that someone thinks you might be an easy target.

The thing to do about that is to stop letting yourself go and to start putting yourself back together. Of course you could go right on looking more and more like a victim and just carry a gun but this seems a poor choice, having to bolster your self with a deadly weapon.

My nephew suggested Bambi's friend, Thumper. Tire thumper that is, a short baton sold at the truck stop for checking tires. Not a bad idea, having some sort of a weapon. I will ask the king to turn one for me.

Since the incident I've become the hunter. I'm looking for that little silver Nissan Hardbody truck whenever I go out.

step 7: stick with it

Just do it! And do it again and again and again. Stay with the plan. Follow the blue print.

Persistence is your friend now. Your only friend. Do not stop. Review your first six steps everyday.

Having a partner to work with is great but they are hard to find and often will not share in your goals (they have their own.) If you can get a partner though, do it. A partner will drag you along when you are perfectly willing to skip a day.

This step is as important as any other. What good is it to plan on change and then not do anything about it?

If you are working on getting fit like in our example then you must, MUST(!) do something about it today. Do not let today go by without doing something.

If you have written out the values that govern your life like Ben Franklin did, what are you doing about them? You must do something everyday! If you have developed a definite purpose for making an improvement in your life what are you doing about it? You must do something about it.

Well, that's the end of the series. Any one step can be subdivided into a number of steps by itself and they often are. It might even be a good plan for you to do that yourself, break each step down into little easy to handle chunks. I think it might really help to figure things out.

apt

"I'm deaf, dumb and blind," cried Saul Bellow "the slave of unknown masters."

It seems Mr. Bellow might have been portraying himself as a victim when he spoke these words but I see no need to affix such a label.

The sentence speaks for all of us some of the time and for some of us all of the time.

I'm deaf, dumb and blind, the slave of unknown masters.

We do not end up with a life that we would have designed for ourselves if given the opportunity. We do not end up being what we think we want to be. We do not go down a path because we have chosen it. We are all slaves to unknown masters inside of us, doing as these masters please and living as a response to their commands.

All of this is certainly true, how else can you explain the crazy things that people do.

Most people will be in slavery for all of their life, a few will come to terms with it, most will find eternal frustration with it and some will realize that it doesn't have to be that way. The later will trudge down the difficult road of personal development, some to find freedom and some to find more frustration.

All the self improvement literature instructs us to determine our purpose, to set our goals, to pursue our dreams. Where the literature fails is that it doesn't tell us to find our place first, to look at our base, to determine where we are starting from.

What is it inside that makes us buy something we don't really need, makes us eat something that isn't any good for us, makes us skip our exercise and makes us susceptible to all sorts of things that are of no help at all?

Perhaps we should spend as much time identifying our unknown masters as we spend in determining our purpose and our goals. Making plans for improvement may just be futile if we do not make plans for freedom.

step 6: learning

You have the plan now implement it.

As you implement each step of your plan your mind and your body responds to the new input in a positive way. What seems hard today will be easier next week, and easier still a few months from now.

By doing new tasks you gain knowledge and skills. If your plan is about changing your thinking your mind will respond, if it is about changing you physically your body will respond.

With each new task completed comes new confidence in your ability to do more.

Nothing happens at all if you don't act on your plan. All the planning in the world, all the desire in the world, all the hope in the world is lost if you don't get started. The longer you sit around wanting to change and not doing anything to change, the harder it will be for you to get started on your change.

Any time is a good time to start and once you have started completing each step is a learning experience, a victory for you on your road to change. Completing each step, gaining knowledge, gaining strength, paves the way for your eventual success.

You have to be on the road to get anywhere.

step 5: blue print

If you are building something you need a blue print. You need a plan, a plan that you write out for yourself, a step by step guide to follow.

Each step in your plan is your next goal. Completion of the whole plan is the completion of a major goal. Completion of this major goal is your purpose for doing it in the first place and it is a part of you, a part of what you want to be.

Making a plan is both the hardest and easiest thing you have to do.

It is the hardest because you may not have any idea where to start. That is where time spent on step 2, finding a role model, comes to your rescue. There is someone out there who has done what you want to do, study their actions and duplicate their steps and you will have a plan.

Making a plan is the easiest thing to do because you can go to the book store and buy a plan right off the shelf. Thousands of books have been written on how to do things, these are all plans. There is so much information available to us that it is astounding. You can make one trip to a book store, buy ten books and have all the plans you need to completely change your life.

In our example for this program I have already plugged a book and I am going to do it again. Our example is becoming physically fit and the plan we are using is Pushing Yourself to Power by John E. Peterson. This book provides all the instruction we need to reach our goals. Look for it at your local book store or at Amazon.

coincidence?

Well my short story below is true, it happened just last night.

I stayed up pretty late writing, and listening, and watching for that little silver truck. (Well, I was mostly watching TV actually.)

Never saw a thing.

This morning the rear window of the Chevy is busted.
Can't tell if there was force applied or not, maybe.
A fine hit with a ball bat might have done it. Hard enough to crack the whole thing, not hard enough to go through it.

Coincidence.

a short story

I skipped my work out. I went home. I had run out of gas right at the end. My knee hurts, I told myself, whatever. There is always an excuse when you want one.

It is always a struggle.

I stopped at the grocers on the way home. Four self serve checkouts open, four different customers checking out. I didn't pay any attention to any of them. I scanned my fruits and nuts and headed for the truck.

I putzed around for a while, had to find something in my gym bag. One of those other customers came out, got in his little silver truck and drove off.

I left my space, drove to the exit. Across the street sat that little truck. I got a kind of a funny feeling when I saw him sitting there.

I headed for the light and that little truck pulled in behind me.

I made a left and started doing some math in my head, what are the chances of someone going the same way as I am. He didn’t turn off when he had a chance. Odds of this being a coincidence are decreasing.

I went down the main street and turned left at my shortcut, he followed, and the odds change again.

I quit my route home and made another left, so did he. Okay, there are new houses up here maybe that is where he is headed.

I sped down the street, it took me back to a road I had already passed, and he followed.

I had to wait for some traffic before I could turn. I made a right and headed for the freeway ramp, so did he.

Okay, he is following, but he sucks at it. I’ll try to lose him here, I went eighty, and I got stuck behind two cars running side by side. Finally by I went over the hill and down to the exit ramp, I can just barely see his head lights in my mirror. Up the off ramp, stop, right turn, floor it, this machine needs a tune up. I caught the light at route forty just right, sailed through it. Going up an incline now, road bends to the right, he’s far behind, he can’t see me now.

Hard on the brakes, right turn up a side road, if I get over this next incline he won’t be able to see me at all. Just before I reached the summit, headlights turn onto the road behind me. How does he do that?

Down down down through the wicked darkness. Hard right back into town at the end of this road. In amongst the houses again, left at the stop, another stop, another stop, turn right so he can’t see my taillights. Left on forty, right at the main intersection, there’s a cop in the convenience store, should have stopped.

Down the street I go, this is the same street I was on when I left my route. Right again at the stop, this time blow by the freeway ramp, should I duck into the truck stop?

Kept going, should have stopped, driving through this town, watching, wary, alone. Past the police station, someone inside, should have stopped.

Ducked down my street, there are no headlights behind me, clear clear clear.

Pulled into the lot across from the house and parked in the shadows of my neighbor’s bigger truck.

I am not a warrior. I am like most people, when faced with danger I am self-conscious. “I could get hurt here.”

Fear comes naturally; it got there before I could stop it. Decisive action right at the start would have saved me from all that fun driving. In situations that happen suddenly, decisive action is called for, not being of two minds.

Fear keeps most of us from doing what needs to be done. Face your fear everyday, face it when you work out, face it when you deal with people, face it every way you can. It is like building any other skill. Practice makes perfect.

And watch out for little silver trucks.

step 4: emote

It's not just an intellectual exercise.

It's an emotional one.

You have to have feelings about it.

It's a matter of displacement too; you have to make a little room for it. You have to become emotional about your vision. You have to attach personal feelings to it.

Being dispassionate is a mistake. You've been logical, you've thought things out, and you’ve weighed your options. Where has it gotten you?

This is a pretty simple lesson. You don't have to learn it here. It has already been taught to you many times over in your life.

I was given this lesson myself just a few months ago. I thought I might win a promotion, one I knew I deserved. I had the experience, the knowledge, the skills; I had everything that could be wanted for the job. But I was not, on the surface, emotionally involved in wanting the job. I played my hand just as it was, laid my cards out on the table, poker face, no bluffing. I didn't get the job.

Did I lose it because I didn't say that I really really really wanted the job? Maybe, I don't know for sure. But I am sure it made some difference.

So now you have your vision and what is it worth? Nothing if you don't get your emotions involved.

When someone says something bad about your vision your blood should heat up, your heart should pound and your tongue should grow sharp. If it doesn't it is because you don't really care.

If you don't care then you might as well stop now, it won't do you any good to read any more lessons.

purpose too

Deciding on your purpose in life can be a daunting task.

After all most people go through life without ever even thinking about this.

The self development books and programs emphasize that this is one of the first steps you should take. Many of them have whole sections on getting this job done. You should figure this out and you should do it now is their advice.

I don't entirely agree with them.

This is great advice for some people, good advice for others and poor advice for a few of you.

I think it has something to do with our upbringing. For those of us whose parents could identify with a chosen profession it may be easier. For those of us whose parents simply worked their way through life, who never found their own purpose, it may be harder.

If you find it difficult to construct your own personal purpose in life I suggest you treat it like a puzzle and just put part of it together today and come back some other day to work on it again.

You see you may not figure all of it out but you probably have a good handle on part of it. Let's use our current example on this blog to look at. You may know that you want to be fit for the rest of your life, so you use that as part of the overall picture of yourself, of your purpose. Work on your fitness and when that pays off add the next component.

By doing it like this you can build yourself the complete picture. The picture you are trying to figure out now.

step 3: that vision thing

This is not something that everyone can get, you probably can, but not everyone can.

The reason some people can't do this is because they don't see the world, they might feel the world, they might smell the world, they just don't see it.

Most people see the world and you can tell who they are. They use visual terms when they speak. They use them all of the time. See what I mean?

A smaller percentage of people don't interact with reality in the same way. They might say 'I hear what your saying.' or 'That really touched me.'

I bring all of this up just in case you are someone who feels about the world versus seeing the world, or if you are someone who uses any other form of sensory perception to interact with the world. Just use the perception that you favor instead of the visual one that I'm writing about and you will get today's article.

This is the third article in my series this week and it has to do with that vision thing. Seeing the world the way you want it to be. Of course I am talking about your own little world not the great big one out there that we have no control over.

If you want to accomplish something you need that vision thing. If you want to do something you need to see yourself doing it. Planning and study don't really get it by themselves. You need to have a clear picture in your mind of the accomplishment of your goal.

My example this week is achieving fitness. So I need to visualize myself as a lean muscular man, I need to visualize myself working out, I need to see myself as something that I'm not (yet.)

And that is what you need to do also. Put a picture of yourself in your mind. A picture of you accomplishing your goal. A portrait of you getting the job done and enjoying it.

That is the vision thing.

See what I mean?

win a guitar

Sign up to win an Epiphone Sheraton here.

Hey, someone has to win it!

post it

GET FIT

GET IN SHAPE

WORK OUT EVERYDAY

THIS IS IMPORTANT!

Check out my series this week on using a seven step success program.

step 2: model

Modeling, I aspire to modeling.

Modeling someone who has already done what I want to do that is. Not to being a model.

I think modeling is a fairly recent term. We use to, and often still do, call it finding a roll model.

Now if you want to be as good as someone in what they do you start by doing what they do. They have already reached a level of success or you wouldn't know about them. So you study them. You observe them in action if you can, talk to them and ask them questions.

If you can't do this then you might read about them. Read a biography of the person who you admire. The problem with this is that a biography will include things that you may not want to know about. It will contain information beyond what you need to know.

In bookstores you will find a few books dedicated to modeling. Books like 'How to think like Einstein' or 'How to think like Leonardo Da Vinci.'

You can also find How To books written by people who have already done it. This is more or less the same thing, it is just lacking in the personal touch.

A role model does two things for you: A role model shows you that your goal can be reached and a role model shows you how to do it.

So after you determine the purpose that you want to work on find someone who has already done itand pattern your actions after theirs.

Since the example this week is the attainment of fitness I've picked a book to work from and the rest of this post will be a shameless plug.

Look at this fellow here.

This guy is a year or two older than me and he looks great! (Unlike me.)
The thing is he has never lifted weights!

Now I've lifted a lot of weights, lifted just last night. I've done it off and on in five different decades. I've just never put everything together over the long term to end up like, and to stay like, this guy. The program in this book is the one that the king and I will be following, it is all worked out for us, we have found our model.

You can find this book at Amazon.

junky's blog

Stop just a moment please. You've stumbled upon a self improvement junky's blog. No need to buy a new book or take one out from the library, I've already done that. The truth is they all pretty much tell you the same thing, they just express themselves in a million different ways.

You might wonder why new ones are printed all the time. I think it is a matter of freshness, of fashion and of hope on the part of the reader. The truth is that the process you learn about in a new book is likely to be the same process written about in another book twenty years ago. It can be written about over and over again for one simple reason, it works!

This week I am writing about one such process. I am writing about it in a barebones fashion, you get the process and you get to skip the extra two hundred pages of fluff that usually comes with it.

This is a process that builds the skills needed to make changes in your life. A process that puts a positive skill in place, the skill of self discipline.

I posted the first step Monday morning. The king, one of my regular readers, and I are doing it. It would be really silly of me to write about this stuff if I wasn't doing it, don't you agree?

In the first step, selecting your purpose, I chose to use fitness as an example. You can substitute anything else that you have in mind for your purpose. I am writing about the process in one week, it will take longer to actually do the whole process and get results.

step 1: purpose

Have you decided yet? Are you still sitting on the fence?

Isn't there something? Anything?

You need a cause, a reason.

If you want to make change in your life you need to define your purpose.

Now for the sake of this example we are not going to go through the process of working out our big purpose in life. That is something you should be thinking about, something you should be taking your time to consider.

For this step we are going to set a fairly common purpose, a universal purpose, a purpose that will help us work on anything else we want to do in our lives.

Our purpose is to simply achieve fitness.

Fitness is worth the effort. Being fit will help you in everyday life. Life generally gets in the way of fitness and we are going to take steps to prevent that. If you are young you are probably fit already or nearly so, if you are older you know that fitness slips slowly away from all of us unless we work on it a little bit.

Achieving fitness is our goal, our purpose. You should stop right now and write it down, post it where you can see it, think about it. It is worth the effort.

trial offer

This week I have a trial offer for you.

Stick with me for seven days and we will go through a step by step process of change.

A process that will build the skills needed to make changes in your life.

I am going to use a fairly universal example in this process, a simple purpose that we all want and need if we are going to move on to our bigger purpose in life. I am going to use the example of getting fit. No matter what else you want to do, being lean, fit and healthy is a great advantage to getting it done.

So come back soon. I'll have the first step up later this morning.

the mirror

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

Not a real mirror but the one in your mind. The one you see when you think about yourself.

Do you see the job you have? I work at this place and I do this.

Do you see the things you have? I collect such and such. I have this and this.

Do you see the place where you live? I live in this suburb.

This is an example of how to think. You become what you think about. You are thinking about what you are doing even if it isn't what you want to be doing.

You need to think about what you can do if you want to improve your life. You are very capable of doing many things, things that are unique to you, things that only you can do.

Try to think about the things you can do. You can exercise so you can get back into shape. You can write so you can start to create something unique. You can be a person with self control so you can lose weight.

Work on the things you can do and that you want to do. Think about yourself in these terms. In a little while you will see someone else in the mirror and you can start to think about what you really want to do instead of what you happen to be doing.

only $1,795!

So I put the mail out of the box and along with the important stuff like Guitar Player magazine and a box from Amazon is a brochure from some learning institute, wow, cool, I've got to look at this.

Now for only $1,795 they will teach me to trust myself to make good decisions, and the class starts tomorrow by the way.

I can also choose a program where I learn to empower myself or one where I can learn to be fearless or the one where they teach me to be authentic. Each of these classes is available at the low cost of only $1,795 each! That's only $7180 for all 3 courses.

Where are these people coming from?

They write: "The popular psychological model of stimulus-response teaches us that our emotions and experiences are being caused by people and events outside of ourselves," (I don't believe that my emotions are caused by anyone else by the way) "implying that we are not in charge because our responses are determined by the stimulus. By adding a critical missing link, we have created a revolutionary, yet simple, process which shifts us instantly from the passenger's to the drivers seat." (Well at least they use metaphor, I like that.)

"Our new model is stimulus-belief-response.

How does it work? In between the stimulus and your response, there is a BELIEF that we use to filter and make sense out of the stimulus in our lives. Why is this so important? Because beliefs can be changed, which means responses can be changed. We put you in the driver's seat by helping you to examine your current beliefs that support the life you want."

Uhh? I think that means that you learn how to think the thoughts that you want.

Gee, that's what I write about here, and it's all free.

literally

Don't believe it.

It is an act of self deception to take what I say literally.

It is an act of self deception to take what anyone says literally.

It is an act of self deception to take anything you read literally.

You see you just can't do it.

You are not me. You cannot see things as I see them. You do not have the same experience in the world that I do.

I write from my perspective. If I am writing well then I am delivering my message from my point of view. Sometimes I slip up on the writing well part, this complicates the matter.

Your perspective, most likely, will allow us to intersect in a place of near understanding. But not complete understanding. You will be able to nearly get everything I write, just not exactly get it.

Even when we seem to be in complete agreement on something there will be a variation in the color.

It is that way with everything. This is something that reminds us to be humble. This is something that tells us not to act strictly but to act with some degree of latitude.

This is something that tells us to think for ourselves.

start to finish

I've had a lot of great ideas through the years. Lots of things that I 'm interested in gave me a lot of opportunity. Talked about a lot of things. Started to do a lot of things.

Can't say I have a good track record when it comes to finishing.

Persistence.

I don't give up because of a set back, just sort of let the work slide.

Persist and you will get things done.

heavy hands

I'm not talking about my fumbling excursions on the guitar when I mention heavy hands, I'm talking about an excellent exercise system.

It simply is one of the best and it is overlooked by too many people. Lucky for all of us it is still alive and kicking, in fact the people selling the books and the little weights have a blog right here on blogger.

And here it is.

The author of this great idea is still helping us with his experience and he even answers questions on the blog.

Well I'm adding the link to my sidebar in the commercial section. When you want to start an exercise program take a look at this one.