Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

The glass is neither half-empty nor half-full

The obvious usefulness of the half-empty/half-full metaphor obscures the deeper truth that lies behind it.

We are able to judge someone's ability to contribute to a project, a business, or our lives by simply observing whether they consider situations as declining or growing.

"Half-empty' people view the world around them with dismay and take the position that the best in life is over and all that remains are the dregs. No matter what anyone does, their attention is firmly fixed on the past and its supposedly better days. As a result, their ability to exert a positive influence on anything around them is negligible.

We may consider such people as losers. The truth in their eyes is infinitely worse. they consider that they have already lost and they are resignedly staving off their inevitable descent into oblivion. These people live with the specter of imminent failure every day. The wonder is not that they are depressed, the wonder is that they are able to continue living at all.

The mere fact that they are able to continue working and living, while whining and grumbling as they do, hints that under it all they secretly hope that there is some slight chance of rescue.

And there is.

Life sweeps onward through time and space, even for those who are hiding under rocks like a hellgrammite. There is no inevitability that things will "improve" or "decline". There is only change and your own potential to exert control over some part of that change.

At at given moment, you can bring about a dramatic change in your own future by deciding to confront what it is that you are doing and how it is related to your own chances of personal survival. It is this incredibly powerful, yet subtle action of facing something and taking responsibility for some part of it that starts you an the road to taking control of your destiny.

Without getting into the broader issues of looking out for oneself versus looking out for self, others and for humanity, it is sufficient to say that the road to personal and community survival starts with taking responsibility for your own condition in life and acting to change it for the better.

This is true, even if you have struggled and lost every time you tried to change things before. All that happened was that you didn't observe what part you played in your demise. You could have been lacking information, because all the will-power and determination in the world will not help you if you are being wrong-headed about who is to blame for your present condition.

I say this, not from some lofty height of divinely inspired enlightenment, but from having been guided by others to improve my ability to confront my actions over time until I was able to see that I exert control over life only to the extent that I can confront it.

If you would like to see things get better instead or worse, I suggest that you might want to learn how to observe what is happening and take responsibility for some small part of it. It could be enlightening. Results may vary...

The glass of life is continually being refilled. Make sure you are prepared to drink deeply of it.

Growing wiser instead of just growing older

LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE

As we age, we have experiences that range from incredibly good to disastrous. If we survive these experiences, we have a chance to learn from them and go on to further adventures. If we get stuck in these experiences, we merely get older.

I'd like to suggest that charging into the barricades of life with guns blazing and a total determination to succeed is a winning strategy, as long as you keep track of the odds against you. If the odds against you keep rising, you have made a tactical error and need to fall back to a point of safety and regroup.

There is nothing wrong in making a few mistakes. It's making the same mistake over and over that reveals your level of insanity. You are led into making mistakes when you have insufficient or incorrect information. Learning from mistakes allows for continuous improvement. There are some professions like design engineering and programming which are simply organized methods for learning from earlier mistakes.

If you learn from your experiences instead of repressing them or fixating on them, you will surely achieve a measure of wisdom over time. I think that is a happier course of action than avoiding life or regretting life. You become smarter over time, because your experience has turned into knowledge.

BEING STUCK IN THE PAST

Let's look at the other end of the spectrum, the people who seem to be getting older but not wiser. You will find that their attention is stuck in the past, either on their failures or more surprisingly, their successes.

Too many times, the high school football star, the Homecoming Queen, and those fortunate children who are in the right place to become real celebrities on the stage or screen, are unable to move on and duplicate that success elsewhere.

This can even happen at work. A salesperson can have an incredible season which catapults his or her company into a new operating range. If the company promotes them to a managerial position, they may never again achieve the success they once had. If they cannot change and move on, they remain a perpetual has-been in their own minds although they have as much ability as they ever did.

Lets looks at the more usual case, the disaster which changes your life. If you have really failed hard at something, whether a career, a marriage, or a business of your own, you know how hard it is to pick up the pieces and move on. Death of a loved one falls into the same category. The only thing I can tell you from my own experiences is that all of these are surmountable and you will go on to happier days with renewed love of life if you persevere.

THE BOTTOM LINE

It is almost impossible to create a future while looking backwards

Get counseling, if you can, but do not allow yourself to pine over past glories or past defeats. The beautiful sadness of regret may look good in tragic novels, but it doesn't do much for real life. Appreciate the fact that you are still alive and contimue to create your own tomorrows.

Set a goal, any goal, and work toward it by using all of the experience you have gained. You will get wiser as you get older and you may enjoy life a lot more.

This book is not for everyone. Should you read it?

If you are one of the fortunate few who are happy in your job and don't wish to rock the boat, by all means don't read Danger Quicksand - Have A Nice Day.

On the other hand, if your work is not going well, you should buy and read this book. It will help you analyze what is actually going on and will provide workable solutions you can actually implement.

Here are a few ways this book can help you:

1. It should help you extricate yourself with dignity from almost any adverse situation you find yourself in.

2. It will provide you with guiding principles for improving almost any employment situation where there is still room to negotiate.

3. It can guide you out of a dead-end job.

4. It can rekindle your ability to create a job for yourself, where you do something you are passionate about.

5. It will give you renewed certainty of your actual worth to a company and show you how to play the game as an employee in the 21st century.

If you are truly enjoying your job, you are very fortunate. Buy this book for your friends who aren't doing as well as you are. They will thank you.

You don't need permission to create - part 4

Rejection is not good for your state of mind or your creativity.

I consider that rejection is what occurs when you don't set your expectations properly.  When you have unrealistic expectations, you will set yourself up for rejection constantly. Your jobs won't work out, your career plans won't work out, and your books won't get published.

Almost all of us remember exploring the dating scene at one time or other and getting rejections that shattered our self-esteem. Usually we discovered that we were trying to establish a relationship without taking the first steps of getting in communication with the other person.

People new to sales run into the same kind of rejection, because they try to close without really having a conversation with the customer. Salespeople who care about their customers rarely experience rejection.

Authors invite rejection by sending material to publishers who have no interest in their type of story. Even self-published authors can fall into this trap by trying to mass-market their book without finding out where their audience is and what that audience wants.

Dan Poynter and John Harnish make a good case for marketing your book before you write it. If you have done enough market research, informal or not, you will have a good idea what people need and are willing to pay for. This seems to work in the case of romance novels, but your book may just be a clone of a thousand other novels. That's not my idea of writing. It feels too much like work!

Try this instead:

1. Find something YOU want to write about.
2. Learn all you can about the subject, the size of the audience, where the books can be sold, and how many books have been written recently on the subject.
3.  Find out who wants and needs your book and what they are willing to pay for it. This takes work, but every bit of information you acquire puts you in a stronger position when it comes to getting your book published.

By the time you are finished, you will have a good idea of your chances of making money publishing this book. At this point you will be ready to decide whether to go POD, self-publish, or go the traditional route through Cousin Andrew who is a senior editor at Harper.

If you understand the odds against success as a new author and choose to seek out an agent who will get you published, you might be fully prepared for the length of time it will take you to get published. If you have set your expectations properly, you will probably hang in there long enough to get published, even if it takes many years.

It doesn't matter which route you choose, the important thing is to proceed logically so your expectations stay realistic all through the process.

This is where you should read Dan Poynter's Self Publishing Manual again and again, because he does a marvelous job of advising you without crushing your spirit. The same applies to John F. Harnish and his book on POD.

I want you to write and be published. The way to do this is to proceed at your own pace and avoid situations where you will face unnecessary rejection. We know that there is no shortage of shelf space on the Internet or at Amazon.com, so your first barrier to overcome is to get your book published. I think you will be able to do that.

All you require after that is a killer marketing campaign, which you may not have money for, or an understanding of viral marketing and how you can use it to get your book into the hands of as many readers as possible.

I can't give you expert advice on that yet, but I can share some interesting experiences with Danger Quicksand - Have A Nice Day. I'll cover them in a future post.

You don't need permission to create - part 3

Do not tolerate needless barriers.

Let's say that you have gotten to the point that you can consistently write material that others want to read. Now it's time to clear away any barriers between your work and a wider audience.

Notice I said audience, not customers. We do best when we take one step at a time. You have a work in progress or even complete, but it isn't a product until it is in a form that can be exchanged for money.

You need to determine your audience, and it isn't everyone. If you intend to be a published writer, you need to establish a dialog with your target audience so that you know what they want to read and what they will pay for it.

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to develop a conversation with a potential audience is for you to have a weblog. Your audience can be defined as those people who come back again and again to comment on your posts or who send you emails asking how the book is coming, even when there isn't one yet. After a relatively short time, perhaps a few months, you should know who is really interested in your book and will buy it if the price is right.

If you are a writer and don't have a weblog, you are handicapping yourself needlessly. Your only hope to get published is through the traditional publishing structure. If you enjoy being invalidated, ignored, and being put down as a nuisance, traditional publishing has lots of that for you. You will be in good hands.

On the other hand, if you value your sanity you will not let yourself be put in a position where you wait helplessly to be selected out of thousands of applicants for a marginally remunerative opportunity. When there are tens of thousands of new writers striving to be selected by struggling publishers, you are looking at a bottleneck of enormous magnitude. This is a HUGE barrier between you and your prospective buyers!

Lets get back to basics. The only barrier that will stop you is the one which makes you lose hope. Lack of money, time, or sleep will not do that unless you are also suffering from the REAL barrier which is invalidation (ridicule, humiliation, criticism) by someone whose opinion is important to you.

Some advice here: If you are doing your best to excel as a writer and are working steadily to improve yourself, and you are being invalidated for trying to be a writer, you need a reality check. You are trying to live normally in the presence of a toxic individual. You might as well try staying healthy while swigging poison. You need a change of scenery.

Take a cold, hard look at what you are trying to create. You want to write and publish a book and presumably develop a career as a writer. You don't have time to develop a bulletproof personality, so the sane way to proceed is to choose a path that does not automatically set you up for a loss.

You should expect to work hard, very hard to get your book published, but you shouldn't allow yourself to be put down because you are an unknown writer. That truly is the way to madness. Don't do it.

Self-publishing or POD publishing puts YOU in control of the process. There is no shortage of competent POD companies or short-run printers. There is no shortage of competent designers of all types who can take your manuscript and package it for printing. All you need to supply is talent and money.

You may say, "I knew there was a catch!"

You need to wake up and smell the coffee. Someone always has to supply talent and money!

If a publisher is supplying the money, he will go for the most readily salable talent he can get. Is that you? Not without a track record! You are way back in line behind the writers who have already demonstrated that they can sell books. Traditional publishing is a zero-sum game. If Grisham is available, there are no production slots open for your book.

You need an opportunity to publish your book at a price you can afford. POD publishing will allow you to do that. Once you have demonstrated that your books will sell, other opportunities will open up for you.

The next thing we need to consider is how will you sell your books when you can't stand more rejection. I will address that in a future post. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, keep writing.

You don't need permission to create - part 2

If you have what it takes to become a writer, this simple process will kick start your writing ability.

First of all, stop worrying about what people will think of your writing. There is plenty of time for that when you try to make money selling your work.

If you want to be a writer, the first and foremost thing you MUST do is to uncork the creative bottle and let the genie out. You must get yourself to the point where you can sit down and easily write 500 or 1000 words about anything that interests you.

You get this ability very simply. You write for an hour or until you reach 500 words every day and you continue this until you find that you want to write 1000 or 2000 words every day.

The same thing applies to drawing, painting, and any sort of designing. Until you have done drawings, paintings or designs every day, you will still be struggling with the mechanics of the matter instead of capturing ideas for posterity.

When I say write, I mean write, not polish and finagle the language around until it reads like one of William Gibson's novels. You write by keyboarding your ideas, one after another until you gain the ability to write easily and without effort.

Let us say you have never done dialog, for example. Have you ever considered that you could learn to write through the following process:

1. Start by simply writing snatches of dialog for an hour or so, using your memory as a guide.

2. Concentrate on capturing the essence of the exchange, rather than worrying about the paragraph format and the punctuation. If you get stuck during this first attempt, find a novel and read enough dialog until you get an idea how it appears on the page. Then write for an hour or until you have a big win doing it.

3. When you are finished, put your work away until tomorrow and get on with your life. During the time you are not writing, listen to conversations and think how you would describe them in print.

You will probably find yourself looking in books to see how other writers do dialog. Don't spend too much time on this yet, just get the idea how interesting dialog is written.

4. Go back to your writing the next day and see what changes you might make to make the dialog more real or more believable. Now this is really important - Don't make changes in what you have written!

Spend your time writing NEW dialog that  incorporates what you have already learned. Do not spend much time rewriting or polishing. The product you want is pages and pages of NEW dialog.

End off when you have written 500 words or so or an hour has passed, whichever comes first. Put away your work and don't mess with it. Go out and live life.

5. Listen to conversations with a sharper ear this time and look at some pages of dialog in books to see what else you could do to make your writing more realistic. Repeat step #4.

If you continue this process for about a week, you will accumulate a ton of experience on writing dialog. You may not be fluent yet, but you should be able to recognize great dialog as opposed to mediocre dialog.

At this point, you might want to look at some articles and books about writing dialog. They will make sense now and you may be able to incorporate this data into your writing.

On the other hand, you may decide that a book or article doesn't make sense because it espouses a style that doesn't fit what you need. That's OK too, because when you actually start writing, your powers of observation are sharpened. You will begin to exercise judgment as to what is useful to you.

There is lots more to be learned, but by following this process of doing, refining, repeat until enlightened, you will smoothly and certainly achieve the ability to write passable dialog. Once you are there, you can tackle another skill while continuing to move your dialog writing to a professional level.

Little by little, you can become a writer who can actually write. Then it is time to decide what you could write that people would want to read. I will cover that in a future post.

You can see that this process of learning by doing is quite different from the usual regime which typically goes like this:

1. study examples of great writing,
2. write an exercise,
3. spend lots of time discussing the exercise
4. Repeat 1-3 until the course is over.
5. write final exercise.
6. discuss

If you have tried the usual regimes and are not writing prolifically, you might want to give my suggestion a whirl. This approach was first espoused in the book, Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande.

I read her book and followed one of her recommended exercises until I looked forward to writing every day. At that point, I had written 60,000 words of a loosely connected series of fictional incidents which may eventually become a Sci-Fi novel. I had not written fiction since the third grade, so this process obviously worked.

I did not do this exercise to produce a novel, I did it to acquire the ability to crank out interesting copy on demand. Once I achieved the ability, I found opportunities to use it. You can do the same.

You don't need permission to create - part 1

Formal education has its downside...

Many kids in my generation grew up with the image of a college education as the only sure ticket out of a life of genteel poverty or manual labor. As an Engineering graduate, that was certainly true for me. On the other hand, I've seen many talented people earning college degrees that did not prepare them for life in the twentieth century, or the twenty-first.

Education is an absolute necessity, but the most able people I know are mainly self-taught. They went through the educational system, but they didn't drink the KoolAid. By that, I mean that they somehow managed to think for themselves at an early age and didn't automatically think of the instructors as Ultimate Sources of Knowledge.

They probably discovered, as I did, that you have to find your own voice, no matter what field you are in. You cannot expect someone else to give you one. Fortunately, there are some professors who do everything they can to encourage you to strike out on your own. Sometimes it works.

You don't need permission to live, and you don't need permission to create.

In fact, you will almost never get permission to create something original, because you are always breaking some rule when you do so.

When you experience the kind of formal education that requires you to sit, listen, make notes, and regurgitate for credit, your success tends to make you wary of striking out on your own. After all, you have achieved high marks by being an efficient sponge and spitting back what the instructor wanted to hear. You may even find that independent research gets you into trouble because your sources conflict with the instructor's opinions or political leanings.

Even if you have a top-notch education from the very "best" of schools, you are being given a carefully selected subset of the total knowledge available, because there isn't time to cover or even discuss data that won't be on the "exams".

You are also exposed to the viewpoint that there are hundreds of important people in your field who are writing books and papers that you must read in order to keep up. If you listen to this advice, and many do, you are dooming yourself to be a follower, a wannabe, a perpetual student.

Let's take the subject of creative writing. There is an infinite amount that can be learned about dialogue, tempo, voice, mood, plot, conflict, characterization, viewpoint, etc. and so forth. Let us look at the real purpose of taking courses in this subject. Are we going to become experts on creative writing as a subject, or are we going to write creatively and entertain readers?

I see too many talented people taking course after course in subjects like creative writing. They spend years preparing instead of years writing. On the other hand, I see people publishing story after story with all sorts of flaws, but they seem to be getting those stories out and are improving as they write.

The bottom line is this: If you elect to follow experts and do not wish to create on your own until you are expert, you have little chance to ever excel. You will be too old to hold a brush or use a keyboard!

Here's a radical suggestion: If you want to write, write every day for a few hours until you are good at it. You will know when that happens, because people will start asking you how you do it or wanting you to write books.

Sure, you should take courses, but as an ADJUNCT to your writing, not as a PREREQUISITE. If you are already writing, you will be in a much better frame of mind to evaluate advice and instruction. Furthermore, you must keep writing, or designing new work all of the time, not polishing and re-polishing some precious little work until it meets with an instructor's approval.

Turn out as much work as you can. You will learn so much more than by grinding over and over on the same thing.

Writing, designing, composing anything is a craft. Editing, reviewing, criticising are entirely different and non-creative analytical activities. Don't try to do both at one time. Your work will suffer.

This post was inspired by a visit to the site of one of my favorite creative people. She is just one of many who should already be in print.

Enough badgering and she will be. :)

Integrity 101

I hear a lot about lack of integrity on the part of individuals and organizations, so I thought I would throw in my two cents worth to make this integrity concept more easily understood.

These classic definitions of integrity appear at dictionary.com:

1. Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.
2. The state of being unimpaired; soundness.
3. The quality or condition of being whole or undivided;

A more action-oriented definition appeared on the marketing weblog wantrepreneur.

A great definition of integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is looking.

Read the entire post, it's worth your while.

It's decision time again...

It's 4:00 am and the house is quiet. I am sitting here deciding whether to launch myself into the future or down memory lane. I am at the keyboard in this predawn hour because a realization about life woke me up, then kicked off other realizations which finally banished any chance of sleeping until I wrote something down.

I had this expanding perception of how our decisions drive us through life. Basically, each decision creates a new future which we step into all unsuspecting. Here are some examples:

Moblogging - Chincoteague, day 3

We had a wonderful sunny day to wrap up our visit to this isolated village on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

We began with breakfast at Bill's Seafood Restaraunt, a bustling, no-nonsense favorite of many locals. Afterwards, we bought freshly made sandwiches for our trip to Assateague at the Grubstake Deli, which also features wines, cheeses and Haagen Daaz ice cream.

We took time to admire the many little groups of ducklings bustling around the streets of Chincoteague, each led by a gently quacking adult female duck. Since the Chincoteague waterfront is also the home of dozens of semi-feral cats, I expected to see carnage, but invariably the ducklings would be paraded safely in front of one group of cats after another. I am still not sure why the cats observed the fuzzy little happy meals with boredom. We saw few dogs and they seemed to ignore the ducks also.

Moblogging - Chincoteague, day 2

We had hoped to see the elusive wild ponies of Chincoteague and it turned out that there are lots of them to see. They are not shy at all. We have not gotten over to the Wildlife Refuge on Assateague Island yet, but there are recently obtained ponies in corrals all over Chincoteague island.

We stopped at the Refuge Inn and a mare and her colt foal came right over to greet us. Here is Gretchen getting up close and personal with the mare.

Moblogging Again - Chincoteague Island

It's 3:30 am and I am writing this from a vantage point on the second floor of a waterfront hotel along the Chincoteague Bay. It is a beautiful night and a cool breeze is blowing up the bay. I can hear the crews of nearby commercial fishing boats preparing for the day's work.

Gretchen and I are staying at the Hampton Inn, which is one of the newer hotels along the Chincoteague waterfront. It is within walking distance of shops and restaurants in the historic downtown area of Chincoteague Island and a short drive from the National Wildlife Refuge and beach on Assateague Island where the famous Chincoteague Ponies roam free.

We have come to celebrate Gretchen's birthday and the beginning of another phase in our lives. It was a leisurely five hour drive through the rolling hills of Virginia to bustling Norfolk and then up the eastern coast of Virginia to our final destination. We chose secondary roads wherever possible as we have learned that our journeys are much more relaxing when we travel the byways. Our speeds are moderate but the trip takes less time subjectively, because there is so much to see.

We dined a few hours ago on flounder, crab, scallops, and oysters at the Landmark Crabhouse on the Chincoteague waterfront. The seafood was fresh and we ate at a table overlooking the bay. The setting sun and the soaring seabirds made it an idyllic scene for our private celebration.

Enjoying the moment...

One of the benefits of semi-retirement is that I get occasional moments when I can stop and take a look at the roses instead of careening by. On the other hand, one of the downsides of working for yourself, as I do, is that you are doing things you love and don't want to take time off.

It seems that I am either going full-tilt from early in the morning until well past midnight, or I am temporarily becalmed. I am in the midst of a busy spurt at the moment, so my blogging is somewhat sporadic. I have been thinking of you all in the past few days, because I see that other bloggers are going through much the same kind of frenzy. It must be that time of year. There is a remedy for these hectic days of our lives.

Faraway places...

When I look back at the beautiful places I have been privileged to visit, I realize that my memories of these trips have been distilled over time to a few bright images, not all of which have been caught with a camera. ^{Click on image to enlarge}

Sometimes the single lasting memory is of a happy moment spent with a loved one. Some of these were captured by a convenient passing stranger, like this shot of Gretchen and me on a beautiful and isolated north coast road on the Island of Maui.

Handle misleading reports - Go to the source

How many times have you read disturbing news and found yourself still upset during the next several days?

Part of this is due to mass media's sensationalizing of events with the added twist of media bias. The line between editorial comment and straight news reporting has become so blurred that it is almost impossible to get a straight story.

If you have been a faithful watcher of network news for very long, you may not even be aware that your news is being sliced, diced and seasoned to suit someone's hidden agenda.

Children of adversity - children of privilege

Denny has written an insightful post, Silver Spoon's Bitter Aftertaste... which echoes some of the observations I made in Baby boomer children - what's wrong.

Denny mentioned his post in an earlier comment on this site, but it bears mentioning again, because of its relevance. You should read it. There are so many lessons to be learned from these unfortunate children of wealth. Be sure you read the comments on his post also.

Let's repeal beal

Beal, if you haven't heard of it yet, is the humorous, but all too real, malady that strikes bloggers at various times of the year, particularly in February and March.

Practical Penumbra's post on Beal Awareness Week characterizes beal as an illness characterized by having it. I consider it an annoying, but non-life-threatening imaginary illness which spreads at internet speed.

Simplify your life

Tell the truth more often.
Then you won't have to remember what you said to whom.

Tell the truth as kindly as possible.
Then you won't have to say you are sorry so often.

Curb those impulses to lash out with righteous anger.
Then you won't have to spend so much time mending relationships.

If it sounds too good to be true, find out what the exchange is.
Criminality is simply getting something for nothing. If you
are not one already, why become a criminal now?

If life is hard to face, don't make it more complicated by running away from it with prescription or illegal drugs.
Find some part of life you can confront and do something about it.

If you can't think of anything else, find an animal to feed.
They will probably not give you any grief about it and you will feel better.

Find somebody to help, starting with yourself.

If all else fails, take a walk until you feel calmer and rested.

Stranger in a Strange Land - Building a support network

I was doing a last-minute browse through my favorite blogs and I was struck by the fact that so many creative and talented people are going through hard times alone. I flashed back on those times when I had been in the same position and recalled how desperate and worried I was at the time. Here's what I learned about going it alone.

Those worst times of my life occured when I made self-determined changes that put me into a different culture with no friends to call upon for support. These included: going off to college, starting my first job in a strange city, and being forced out of a company I had helped to found.

In each of these situations, I found myself facing new and difficult challenges with no one to offer a helping hand. Yet, all of the situations were fundamentally caused by the same thing, I had not developed a network of trusted friends.

February is the time of year when...

There is something about February that prompts a desperate need for change. Sometimes the change is so easy and natural, that I forget until much later what prompted it. I find an interesting synchronicity about this time of year and many of the changes that occurred in my life.

In February, 1968, while looking at the snow piled up against my office window at Honeywell, I decided to abandon Massachusetts for a warmer climate. At the age of 34, I was heavily into skiing and other winter sports like shoveling snow, but the endless effort to keep a house and family warm and healthy were beginning to pall. It seemed that too much of our effort went into getting warm and staying warm, with not enough time for interesting projects and life in general.

Why good people hit the wall

Hitting the wall is a well-known phenomena in almost any field where you have freedom to exercise initiative. If you are in sales or marketing at any level, or in almost any management position, you have seen someone hit the wall and splatter or you have done so yourself.

This generally happens to a self-motivated person who has managed to succeed in spite of all obstacles put in his or her path. They push through one barrier after another and succeed even while others may be telling them to stop making waves. Just when it seems they are unstoppable, they hit a barrier they can't overcome.

Setting expectations - Part 2

This post is a continuation of an earlier post which put forth the following concept:

Setting expectations correctly is far more important than the actual work that you do.

The actual setting of management expectations and the strategy you employ depends upon which of these situations you are now in:

Situation 1 - You and your manager are generally in good communication. He responds favorably to some of your suggestions.

Situation 2 - You are afraid of your manager. He manages by instilling fear in his subordinates. You find it extremely difficult to make suggestions to him. He gives orders and expects compliance, not questions. He deals in threats, both overt and covert.

Situation 3 - Your manager is afraid of you. This is difficult to believe because he will usually hide this fairly well. This is the manager who rarely gives you instructions in writing. He will not tell you if there are problems with your work until he has enough data to get you fired. He will show signs of nervousness when you raise questions and will avoid talking to you if possible. When you cannot get feedback on how you are doing, be very, very careful. Your manager may be terrified that you will show him up by inadvertently exposing his lack of ability to the company at large.

What is ruining your life?

Oddly enough, the only way you can break out of any trap you have gotten into is by discovering what is ruining your life. Fortunately, it is always something that you are still doing, or not doing. Otherwise, you would not be able to save yourself.

Let me give you some ideas to think about.

Another basis for judging people

This roof repair project of ours has benefited us in at least two ways. It's been a learning experience and, at the same time, it has validated our past experience. It has served to remind us that we need to be open to new ideas, but we need to test them against what we've learned previously.

New problems may require new solutions, but certain basic actions are the best guarantee of success in any endeavor. You can accurately judge the worth of a person or organization, even yourself, by how well these three things are done:

1. Promising only what you intend to deliver
2. Keeping your word once given
3. Following through so as to meet expectations

Closing thoughts for the day

Whatever our uncertainties, we all hope for those moments when we exceed our most ambitious goals. Those are the moments our dreams become reality and our work becomes an inspiration for others to follow.

The world needs more artists. They are vital to any civilization, for without art a civilization is truly dead.

An Irreverent View of Paradigm Shifts - Pt 2

So, what's the big deal about paradigm shifts?

After all, they are simply changes that produce culture shocks of different magnitude. You don't have to participate in these changes, you can always choose to slide further into the background and watch from a safe distance. If fact, there are people living in the United States today who don't have electric lighting, telephone service, running water or automobiles. They vote and participate in the American culture, but rarely make any major contribution to civilization.

There are many more who have accepted paradigm shifts only after they have gone mainstream. These are the people who are over on the right side of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle that I mentioned in an earlier post.

These are the people who use telephones, but not email. They will only buy computers when they are completely hidden as in the new car they purchase. These people keep things going instead of innovating. The revere traditional values and they contribute significantly to the economy.

Then there are the people like you, who like to be aware of what is coming down the road even if you don't feel that you need to participate now. You may not desire a cellphone that takes pictures, but you would probably buy one if you had a task for it. You are also aware that some disturbing trends are occurring in our society and you would like to have a better understanding of their origins.

One of the lesser known attributes of paradigm shifts is that they may take decades before they are recognized and adopted by mainstream "authorities". This is often referred to as a cultural lag.

Here is a telling example:

Ignaz Semmelweis demonstrated in the 1840s that hand washing prevented the spread of childbirth fever. At the time (early 19th century) doctors would deliver babies without first washing their hands and, worse, would do so after performing autopsies on patients who had died from childbirth fever.

It wasn't until the 1860s when Joseph Lister connected and applied Semmelweis' and Pasteur's work to develop and popularize the chemical inhibition of infection during surgery. Lister is considered to be the father of antiseptic surgery.

It took twenty years for doctors to believe that washing their hands before surgery could have any positive effect. This was just one minor paradigm shift, but it affects the lives of millions every year.

Paradigm shifts change cultures in large and small ways. If you are prepared for this, you will probably feel less threatened when the next one comes along.

Paradigm shifts you may not have experienced yet

There were some interesting discoveries made in the past 60 years that have just begun to surface in mainstream society. Almost uniformly, these discoveries were attacked as arrant nonsense by "mainstream authorities" so you may still have negative opinions absorbed from the Reader's Digest and other popular media outlets. What ever opinions you may have, there are two paradigm shifts that are sure to create some cultural shocks down the road.

As early as 1900, quantum mechanics surfaced as a concept. It has been the subject of intense study since then and has served to confirm the vision of many science fiction writers that alternate universes and teleportation are more than fiction. This IBM research paper on Quantum Teleportation is well worth reading.

For those who want more believable applications of Quantum mechanics, you need to read about the breakthroughs in superconductors and superfluids which scooped the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Another recent breakthough was announced in Britian. Quantum cryptography keys encoded in photons of light have been transmitted more than 23 kilometres through air. They say this is an important step towards a global communications system that is completely secure.

In the 1950s, the matter of personal, spiritual immortality was confirmed and the tools were made available for anyone to verify this for themselves. Since this also involved the whole matter of contacting and making use of data from past lives, this was immediately ridiculed by those who had a vested interest in keeping things exactly as they are.

What is most interesting to me is that much of the world has been very comfortable for thousands of years with the idea of living before, and presumably after, this life. Whether they accepted this on faith or by direct experience makes little difference. What was confirmed in the Fifties with Dianetics, was later applied with hypnosis, and is currently used in regression therapy. As this phenomena becomes more widely experienced in the United States, there will undoubtedly be cultural changes that result.

Matters that were once the sole province of belief systems assume an entirely different aspect when directly experienced. When a person contacts past lives or has an out-of-body experience while awake and not under the influence of drugs, it is difficult to convince him that he is only his body. He understands for the first time that there may be some truth to the phrase, "the spirit is immortal."

As I said in a previous post, these shifts are easily be recognized after they have occurred, but are often dismissed even while they are creating irreversable changes in the way people live and act. We may not accept personal immortality or quantum mechanics as a reality, but they will both have an impact on us eventually.

New Ideal Scenes - Better Than Resolutions

We have just made our first pass at writing up a new ideal scene for 2004. This is merely a detailed description of what we will be doing in several critical areas of our lives.

This is not an idle exercise for us, because if past performance is any guide, these ideal scene write-ups tend to act like self-fulfilling prophecies. What they do is align our intentions so that things happen as we intend them to.

For those of you who already know that you only get what you intend and work for, this is no big revelation.

But, it does help to be reminded of this data occasionally, so here is the rest of it.

An Irreverent View of Paradigm Shifts - Pt 1

Let me start with a working definition of paradigm shifts that might be easier to comprehend than traditional definitions:

Paradigm shifts are simply changes that produce culture shocks of different magnitude.

Lighten up and live longer - part 3

I have seen many posts lately by people who are finding themselves in a bad mood from a variety of reasons: lack of employment, a disintegrating relationship, the cold weather, even a touch of flu.

The cause really doesn't matter. The important thing is to take action and get out of any bad mood as quickly as possible. Bad moods affect your vitality and are detrimental to your health. Staying in a bad mood to let everyone know how upset you are is like shooting yourself in the foot.

Here is a short list of things you might want to do if you're feeling less than your usual self: (If you're feeling great, try this on someone who is not doing as well as you are.)

Lighten up and live longer - Part 2

This is the time of year when painful emotions can overwhelm us if we do not stay alert. An unexpected setback can leave us hopelessly resentful of the holiday mood we see about us.

If you would like to improve your chances of getting through the holidays unscathed, try letting go of the past for a moment and consider what might happen if you got a fresh start.

Right now. Right here, as you sit reading this. Ask yourself this? If you could make one change in what you are doing. What would it be?

If you can't think of a change without getting into heavy shame, blame and regret, you need to cut back on the gradient. For you, the right question might be, is there anything at all that you can do without making things worse?

Lighten up and live longer - Part 1

I touched on this point in an earlier post, but I didn't give it the attention it deserves.

Your emotional state, good or bad, is your responsibility. If you don't agree with this, that's fine, but you won't be able to change your state for the better unless you have an inkling that you might, just might, be causing your current state of mind.

You will find that you can always change your mind and you can always improve your emotional state.

Either change will require some determination and a little effort, but amazingly enough, you will be most successful if you go at this with an unserious state of mind. If you tackle this or any other problem with the idea that nothing must go wrong, you are setting yourself up for failure.

It's time to get organized...

One of the perils of being irrepressibly creative is that there is always time to start new projects and never enough time to file away the results of the last project. As a result, I have a desk that looks like the aftermath of an explosion and a workshop that has enough work in progress for a shop twice its size.

There is supposed to be an optimum balance between organizing and producing. I understand that it should be 25-30 percent organization at the beginning of any project and perhaps 10 percent organization during the remainder of any project.

The Road Less Traveled

Gretchen and I took a new route for this year's Thanksgiving trek and it made a vast difference in our perception of this holiday. These lines from Robert Frost's poem still hold true, for us at least...

Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference

We have great open highways in this part of Virginia which provide high speed access to distant destinations at all points of the compass. We have used them often and marvelled how these limited access highways still deliver effortless speed where the crowded freeways of California no longer can. Even so, hours and hours of coursing these highways, admiring farms and scenic views from afar would leave us curiously burnt out.

Something else I wish I had written

This memorable account of lives connecting in important ways appeared on Indigo Insights. It reminds me to live in a manner that creates the most positive effect on everyone whose life I touch,

Thanks to Ron Bailey for directing me to this story.

UPDATE: Ooops! I should have checked Google first.

This inspirational, fairy-tale has been floating around since before September, 2002. There were 521 listings for it with no attribution. Parables are no substitute for reality in my book. They are beliefs expressed as truths. I prefer knowledge to belief any day as one can accomplish things with knowledge.

Doing what you are doing...

If you would really like to achieve your dreams sooner, be a little bit happier, and feel better about yourself, I'd like you to consider something quite counter-intuitive. Try doing what you are doing, without doing anything else.

If you are writing, write. If you are carrying on a conversation, talk and listen. Turn off the TV, the radio, the CD player, etc. Put down the book, newspaper, whatever. Put all of your attention on what you are doing.

If you do what you are doing without being distracted or letting your mind wander, you will discover something interesting. You will be more productive and your morale will improve, no matter what task you are doing. It sounds simple, but some people cannot do this at all.

Whatever it takes...

Omnivorous bloggers like galstaff, often uncover nuggets of seemingly Far Side information.

It appears that a number of Chinese women are undergoing extreme surgery, "distraction osteogenesis," to become taller and more beautiful. These efforts are based on a perception that being taller, paler, and slender will make them more popular, successful and rich.

This is just the latest step in an age old tradition of people trying to level the playing field of life or at least get on the playing field.

Teach Your Children

There is that song by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young which contains these prophetic words:

Teach your children well...
And feed them on your dreams,
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.

A time for letting go

For the first time in many weeks, Gretchen and I took a work break together. We sat out on our deck in the warm autumn sunlight, enjoying caffè lattes I had brought home from Starbucks.

As I watched the gentle shower of falling leaves, I was reminded of the song based on a passage from the Old Testament, "To every thing there is a season.."

All life is connected

There was a TV series, "The Visitor", which developed the theme, "All life is connected." I truly believe that is so, based on almost seventy years of experience.

There is a mood created by living things and it is as pleasant or unpleasant as those occupying an area. Good vibrations come from healthy happy people, animals, and plants. Keeping them all that way takes work, and more than a little knowledge.

Family

Dictionary.com defines "family" as:
1. A fundamental social group in society typically consisting of one or two parents and their children.
2. Two or more people who share goals and values, have long-term commitments to one another, and reside usually in the same dwelling place.

While there may be continuing erosion of the family according to the first definition, there seems to be a corresponding growth in the concept of family as described in a larger sense. That is probably because being part of a family promotes the survival of all members of the family. Even if the extended or nuclear family is dispersed by economic circumstance, individuals need the protection and sup