Posts Tagged ‘change’

We are conditioned to think from an early age that the wealthiest people are the ones we ought to emulate. We’re bombarded with their actions on television and in the news. Entire magazines are dedicated to following the lives of the usually rich, and generally famous.

It’s not that our parents told us money would make us happy. Most of us were told that money isn’t ‘everything’. We humans have this tendency to ignore words, then listen to actions.

When dad worked through the weekend, or mom gushed over that new diamond ring, we took something from that. A thing that makes us think, “The more money and things I have the happier I will be.” Every episode of E! True Hollywood Story reinforced that into our impressionable childhood personas. We’ve been given a mission: to consume and to take as much as we can. That is the highest honor.

“Let us work for dollars so that we may buy happiness!”

Somewhere down the road though, most of us realized it wasn’t true. Divorce, suicide, depression, Xanax, all these things gave us the hint that maybe money wasn’t that great after all. Still though, what else is there? It’s not like we’ve actually been given any other options.

We visit psychologists and psychiatrists. Trade sad little stories for prescriptions. Sometimes they make it better, sometimes the drugs do the job they’re supposed to. They’re just trying to get the levels in my brain right; that takes some time I suppose.

“One day they’ll find that perfect cocktail for me.”

I found out that the time I got lost in the grocery store as a child causes some of my problems and maybe somebody molested me as a kid. I’m going to hypno-therapy to find out. I’m learning how to tell a really good story. The more I realize everyone else screwed me over in life, the more reasons I have to cry, err, I mean be happy.

I found out that I’m in bondage to a spirit of happiness, that’s what they told me down at the first baptologist church of the fifth night. Monday night is deliverance night, Xenu showed up one time, and a picture of baby Jesus appeared in someone’s napkin after they wiped their mouth. He was in a cradle and everything, just like the nativity. I’m really hoping this deliverance session works out.

Someone told me a large donation will grease the palms of heaven, helping me out of this gosh darned happiness.

Governments create initiatives. Grand schemes to produce better fathers, reduce unwed mothers, rehabilitate people back into society. Never mind you that these seem to never work. All that is needed are bigger budgets. So raise taxes, increase budget deficits, and then once we’ve spent enough, we’ll be happy!

If I was only protected from those evil immigrants, dirty bombs, knives, drunk drivers, health concerns, tax dodgers, and dope peddlers. Then life would be great.

Has anybody seen my freaking prozac?

Politics, sex, love, divorce, suicide, drugs, religion. Wash, rinse, and repeat. Is it possible that something’s missing? Is it possible that somebody’s hiding something from us? Perhaps there’s a secret most people don’t know, perhaps we’re uninformed.

Maybe money isn’t really everything.

Is it possible that wanting something outside of ourselves, that striving to make a positive difference and having a little hope can make us into something better?

I’m living in Serbia right now, and the lack of hope is extremely apparent in most people here. When something bad happens I hear, “This is Serbia.” It’s as though being screwed over is something to be expected. People expect life to be crappy here, life tends to meet their expectations.

Throughout human history, different groups of people have said “Enough is enough.” People have decided that things must change, that the possibility of change is worth sacrificing everything for. Something strange happens in those moments. Things change when people ask for something better. At times only small changes occur, but in rare moments the entire world changes.

Could the reality of things be that we have to hope for more? That we have to expect more out of ourselves? Is demanding more out of life actually a good thing?

Can we make this world into a better place? Will those with hope band together? Will people chose to ignore the status quo?

I want to hope so.

I try to live for it. I try to show respect, to forgive, to look for the best in people. I try to remember that there’s more to this life than the television. I try to build something better, to give more and consume less. Sometimes I succeed.

I’ll keep living for those moments, and I hope maybe you’ll join me.

“It’s possible to control the time I have available to me.” We’ve probably all heard this over and over again our whole lives, although sometimes it’s a little hard to fathom.

A few weeks ago, I decided to embark on “a ruthless crusade against wasting time”, and reclaim time as my own once again and you know, get things done (sound familiar?). The goal of course, is to find the best hacks, tips, and tricks, that’ll make things easier, and ultimately, save money by saving time.

At this point, I will acknowledge that I would probably be better off implementing a wildly successful path like GTD (Getting Things Done). My qualms with programs like that is the “shock and awe” approach they introduce where everything that existed previously has to be rebuilt from the ground up. I support change as much as the next guy, but it’s my experience that drastic surges are not sustainable.

I prefer the focused, gradual improvement method, coupled with a good dose of “rinse and repeat” (just replace application with habit). Implementing change on a small section at a time means it’s not the end of the world if one piece of the puzzle messes up, and your whole framework doesn’t have to collapse. It also means that corrections can be made quickly, without affecting very much else.

Moving on…
One of the first applications I came across when I set out on my quixotic quest is RescueTime and this weekend, I’m beginning to think it just might be working. For the last few weeks, I’ve taken a few minutes to tweak my profile and add tags properly, and basically bend it to my will as much as possible (read, “Try to figure it out”) whenever I receive the weekly update email. I’m gradually getting to the point where I’m beginning to see a pattern, and I’m slowly getting better at using it.

It let’s you do nifty things like tag your applications, and even view your Top 10 applications and websites:

….you can even compare 2 tags against the time spent on everything else:

….and you can even compare 2 tags against the time spent on everything else:

They also have a ton other stuff you can mix together so you can hack your life to perfection (like setup goals, and iGoogle integration)..

Apart from the usual suspects like Lifehacker, Wikihow, etc…, what’re your most useful (and favorite) sources of information?

Growing up, I moved just about every year.  Occasionally we stayed in one place for longer, say two or three years, but we also had shorter stints to make up for those more lengthy “visits.”  All tallied, I moved twenty-one times before I left home for college at the age of 17.

I don’t bring this up to gripe about my nomadic childhood, but only to help contextualize my current wanderlust.  I learned some valuable lessons as a result of the constant change.  Some enjoyable and some painful, of course.  I realized that change is good, but change for the sake of change is bad.  And that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side and yet, sometimes it is.

Sure, there were tears for “lost friendships” and there was certainly sweat when the moving trucks arrived.  Life was sometimes “on the edge” and often I felt out of control and along for the ride.

I’ll admit, though, I certainly don’t think I would be who I am had I had a “normal” stable childhood, living on 100 Easy Street, Anytown, USA my whole life.  I’ve learned how to adjust to new and different environments, how to build friendships that last regardless of proximity, and certainly about the geography of the United States.

Oftentimes growing up, I felt like I had an outsider’s perspective on many things, in particular my peers.  I saw how so many people just did things because “that’s what you’re supposed to do.”  I saw countless individuals living the lives they never fully decided on, breathing and functioning as a result of inertia as opposed to choice.

That’s when I decided that when the day came to spread my wings, I would rely on a combination of logic and gut feeling to evaluate new opportunities.  I determined to never close the door or open the door to something without taking my blinders off and without being scared to hear a new idea or two.  It would be easy for me to verbalize that because I moved all the time growing up that I wanted to settle in one place as an adult.  And yet, as a result of the incessant moving, I realized that there simply isn’t a “one size fits all” solution to life and life’s opportunities and decisions.

I’d say that I presently have a fair share of wanderlust inside me, yet I think I’ve found a rational way of handling my inner drive for change.  It has helped me examine, accept, and reject opportunities with a clear head and a clean conscious.  I’ve learned that if you don’t knock, no one will answer.  If you’re not building trust with individuals, it’s hard to close deals.  And if you are YOUcentric, you can count on less in the form of support.  I’ve learned to rein in change and to harness the power of new ideas.  I believe wanderlust isn’t simply about geography, it’s a paradigm.

It’s also this wanderlust that has brought my wife and I, along with my employees, to the beautiful and strange Tinseltown (LA) for the sake of personal and business endeavors.  We’ve spent the last several years building Epsilon Concepts around Southern California.  The golden state is a golden land of opportunity in our industry and we determined that this change (relocating 2700 miles in a bizarre cross-country employee caravan) was a change that made sense.  With a logical approach and a patient manner, we delved into the journey and we’re relieved to find that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, but so far it’s been pretty green (albeit sprinkler enhanced).  Sure, there will be ups and downs and I’m sure I may curse LA every now and then one of these days (Utopia isn’t located anywhere on Earth, last time I checked!), but I’m truly thankful to be in this town and that my wife, company and I tapped into our collective wanderlust to help make this dream a reality.