Persist through fear until you hear yourself say Holy Shit! December 6, 2009
Posted by Mike in : Mike, Motivation , add a commentI just had that. My fucking heart is racing.
I’ve been looking at the same thing for what seems like eons. So much shit floating around me. My ‘Day to Day’ states:
“At the fishbowl looking at the world and letting everything fade but 1 thing. iPhone databases. Very very complex, yet very very simple. Just focus…focus. See this one thing as the world…the future. Let the energy of it fill you. Feel its fire. I am above the bullshit, I ride alone, this beast is mine to tame. Talk seems to be the appeal in all the twitters and facebooks I see flicking around me. I shut it all out and only see this. I shall sit here till I have it or I will die in my seat. Fishbowl is open 24 hours. Give me database or give me death.”
Within minutes of writing that statement, of letting everyone around me fade, the hundreds of minds dicking around with some shit, when BAM it hit me! I heard myself say “Holy Shit!”.
My Holy Shit was that I finally found out how to take a vast database of data and simple query it for use in my iPhone application!
I just stared at my computer until the screen faded under screen saver. Stared wide eyed. It must be the same feeling a scientist has when they stumble across something no human has ever seen before. They see the truth in it and just pause.
I have been on this for months. Over all the bullshit. The meetings. The talks. Its the persistence that is of the only value. No matter how you feel. The key is shutting it all out, looking at the world, letting it go and rising above it.
In the article “If you want to be rich, first stop being so frightened“, billionaire Felix Dennis says “The number one reason why people fail is because of a fear of public embarrassment”. We fill our minds with this mind clutter. We worry about what others will think. About not making the money. About missing out on all the parties where everyone is mingling, networking, having fun and moving forward. The fear that you will be left behind. It’s bullshit.
The real value is in coming back to the core. For me it is here. In a room of 500 buzzing computers and freeing my mind of all of it. My passion flared a few minutes ago. Vast and beautiful. My skin is still goose bumped. My breath is short. So persist. Persist again. Read this post on overcoming fear if your having trouble letting go of the inner monologues.
The only other answer to how I feel is I had a stroke and am lying on the fishbowl’s floor unconscious dreaming all this…someone call 911.
Can love stimulate creativity in business? November 28, 2009
Posted by Mike in : Mike, Motivation , add a commentIt seems most poets and artists have a muse. Is it that object of their affection that inspires them to create masterpieces or is it something else?
The answer is: both, but mostly something else.
Love can inspire you to create beautiful things, however the act of producing something you are passionate about makes you a creative and loving person. This will attract others of like minds and that will re-inspire you.
I have found that if you neglect that latter part and are waiting for love to inspire you, you will never create anything.
I lost sight of that recently and was focused on money, wanting a vacation and being a whiny bitch.
I left town in a huff last night and here I sit on a public computer in a lobby in Chicago realizing just how far off track I’ve been.
You have to love yourself first. And those you really love, that have actually inspired you, deserve to have that favor returned in a productive way.
Yes, love can give you creative energy, but just do the production as mundane as it may be. Starting will give you the fire you need.
How to Overcome Fear November 22, 2009
Posted by Mike in : Mike, Motivation , 1 comment so farHow do you overcome fear? Fear of meetings. Fear of failure. Fear of what your friends and family will think. Fear of anything that does not actually harm you, like public speaking. Some people fear that more than death.
There are two ways to overcoming fear:
The first is by brute force. You vomit in the bathroom, pop a mint, then walk into that boardroom. It’s best to start slow however. The idea is, it becomes like resistance training with weights. You start off light and work up gradually increasing the weights. Each new situation will always hurt, but the light weights you lifted when you started don’t hurt at all anymore.
Fear is like that. Things that scared you as a child no longer do…except for clowns of course. However, overcoming fear by brute force is inefficient. Takes time and a lot of pain.
There is a second approach. Eliminating fear altogether.
Sounds crazy. How do you eliminate fear? Isn’t fear helpful? Yes it is but only in the fight or flight response that comes from a life-threatening situation. It is in the non-threatening situations like public speaking where fear is detrimental to the success of that meeting. As we all say to ourselves, “If I can just relax, be myself, sound professional, don’t mess up, then I will be successful”. That is true to some extent and that knowledge increases the tension, compounding the problem.
The truth is that fear shows that you have made a fundamental error in your perception of reality.
Take for example an overheard work conversation. You hear your boss around a corner speaking to someone else saying “I’m going to have to fire Mike tomorrow, he does not know it yet so don’t tell anyone”. The rest of the day you see people looking at you odd, your gut hurts, you go home and go over all you did and think about what can you change. It’s only the next day at 8am you find out he was talking about Mike in accounting, not you.
All that fear you felt was wrong. Fear is just telling you that you need to change your reality. It’s a warning sign that you’ve got something wrong. You had an illusion about what reality was when it was not.
Now this is going to get a little trippy here, so bear with me.
Have you ever been in a dream and you wake fully frightened and say “I thought for sure it was real!”. You had a fundamental flaw in your perception of reality while you were coming out of a dream state. If you had known that it was a dream, you would have no fear. If you dreamt you were on stage, but knew you were dreaming, you would not care if the audience laughed at you or not, you’d just walk off stage, perhaps flip them off, but you would not have any fear.
All fear is just a perception. And in actuality, all reality is just your perception using your ears, touch, smell, sight, etc. If you could view all reality as if it were a dream, a dream that you own, then you would have no fear.
Usually the cause of the fear is something pretty basic, such as: you don’t want to make people unhappy, and if they’re unhappy, they think less of you and you start to feel unhappy about yourself.
I tried this technique in a board room where I was selling software I had created. I envisioned about an hour before the meeting that it was a dream. I put the people in their spots and saw them all sitting there, talking.
I said, if I’m in a dream, and I don’t get this gig, I’d just shrug, shake their hands and move on.
I go into the meeting, and I’m still breathing heavy. But I look around and keep saying to myself “I’m in a dream. I’m in a dream.”
As we go around and talk, I’m selling my product and the main guy in the room leans back, smiles and says in a condescending voice to the group, “Well, you know what they say about something that sounds too good to be true.” Now normally, I would have laughed and gone: “Haha, well that’s true but…blah blah blah”.
Instead, something clicked in me and I responded like it was a dream. I leaned forward, looked him right in the eye and go in a slow, firm voice, “Then don’t buy it.”
He leans back quick and goes “NO! I just never heard anyone say anything like that before. Please tell me more”. It was surreal…and fun.
Now this technique can take time, try it in a cafe or while walking down a street. Look at everything around you and view it as if it’s a dream. When you can effectively do that, you will get an overwhelming feeling of peace. Do that in a board meeting, on stage, talking to anyone who’s threatening you, and you will be yourself and answer honestly.
View your life as if in a dream and all fear will fade away. If I had some fancy Budda thing to say I’d insert it here…but all of you reading this are a dream anyway so I’m done.
What is love? October 7, 2009
Posted by Mike in : Mike, Motivation , 1 comment so farIt hits us all. They write reams of poetry on it. It’s used as an identifier of the ephemeral quality on things as diverse as soap to space walks. Is it the quality of something? You love your work. You love your mate. But what is that. In the book “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance“, the author tried to unravel that mystery.
His motorcycle broke in the middle of nowhere. He needed a piece of metal welded. The only place in town was some tooth less guy who said it cost 5 bucks. He’s freaking out. “This guy is gonna work on my baby. No way!”. But limited choices and limited time make him hand it over as he heads out for a shaky cup of coffee. Upon return, the guy hands him the metal bracket and goes “5 bucks”. He looks down…and to his amazement…its the most beautiful weld he has ever seen. No rims. No lips. Rainbow smooth irridesence. He said “Jesus! Here is fifty! That would cost $200 in new york! “. The guy gives him back $45, says “5 bucks” and closes the door. What was that?!. Our traveler loved the weld. He loved the quality. But he contemplates this and comes to the realization that you can’t define quality. Put similar items side by side and most people can point to the one that is better. How do they know?
I challenge you to try it with a friend or two. You will only list things. Like this cap is tighter. That one has a cute bulb. Her hair is darker. Love and quality. We use them daily for people and for things. They define our work lives and our private lives. Yet they are not quanitfiable. So where do you put your passions. What do you love to do. And how do you define that. That is the challenge, and its my challenge as well. Pursue it, and there might just be a million bucks at the end of the road…unless your god damned set on $5.
INFORMATION OVERLOAD October 1, 2009
Posted by Mike in : Mike, Motivation, Resources , 1 comment so farInformation overload. Hits me every day. I don’t mean the newspaper stuff. I mean the ToDo lists. Not that the lists are long, I’ve already spent all week whittling them down to five. It’s the amount of crap I find out for each item as I try to tackle it.
For example, on web developer stuff: “Make a web page center in the browser”. I do a web search on that, 32,000 hits. The second one looks perfect. I open it up and its some tech blog with 20 people suggesting the perfect way to do it with links. I soon have 80 tiny tabs crammed in so tight I can’t tell what they are. So now I have to go through them all and repeat the prior process till I have 13 browsers open with 200 “related” articles and soon I’m off analyzing how giraffes can center themselves in their sleep from zoology today and six hours of my life have passed.
So what do I do? I procrastinate more. It’s a nice little circle that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I read all the GTD (Getting Things Done) stuff like Steve Allen’s book “Ready for anything”:…practiced them as well…it made me so happy to only have 4 categories of ToDo and spend all night moving them between the boxes.
I have found that the only thing that works for me is a timer. Here is a free browser based one that I created (stole) that can be used anywhere just to remind you to get up and take a break. http://www.2people1year1million.com/timer.html.
New studies have shown that the top performers from CEOs to Athletes treat their brain like a muscle. About every 90 minutes they take a 10 minute break that enables them to handle periods of high stress so they can pull off that all-nighter or just produce more in less time. The bonus is after every break you see where you’re at and can get back on track.
P.S. On the bright side I did discover a gem or two in those long lists of articles. I think its hard to find good references because those who know what their doing don’t waste their time answering blog posts, which of course I’ll do if anyone wants to post me a question.