Simpleology
I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.
It covers:
- The best blogging techniques.
- How to get traffic to your blog.
- How to turn your blog into money.
I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.
Why Learn Something NEW Every Day?
What if you could set a goal and have effortless success with it? Like Ali Baba - shazaam you've $250k/yr working less than part time... running some business like the NR (New Rich) who Timothy Ferris writes about in the 4 Hour Work Week.
Well, for some reason, it's not that simple. Don't ask me why.
If you want a never-fail goal that you can appreciate and brag about to all your friends, then set this goal, and see how it works Like Magic!
Set the goal to: Learn Something New Every Day.
You see, it's inevitable. As soon as you start looking you'll notice you are learning many things every day.
I guess the answer to how you can become like the NR - with their financial independence and freedom from labor - lies in asking yourself this final question:
WHAT are you learning every day?
~Craig
History is Pop Culture
Specialization
Where does the impetus to specialize come from? Perhaps we're born with a template for our purpose and proclivities, perhaps our wounding and armoring force adaptation that becomes fixed at the core of our personality. I always think of the whole nature/nurture thing in terms of an acorn... it's bound to grow into an oak, can't grow into an apple or coconut tree... and it's bound to be cut and blown and pounded by the environment as it grows. Together, these inner and outer forces shape the tree we see before us. Each unique.
Here's the interesting part. See, as humans, we have the ability to adapt very rapidly. We also have a challenge with uprooting, or at least re-evaluating, deep inner patterns that we either arrived with or got handed along the way from our families, culture, etc... Toads, insects and trees don't have either the ability to adapt as quickly, or to uproot an adaptation and replace it with another one.
There's an excellent body of published work and training courses that emphasize principles like:
- Failing Forward - John C. Maxwell
- PsychoCybernetics - Maltz/Kennedy (mind like a guided missile's zig-zag steering mechanism)
- Can you think of another one? Let me know...
What I'm getting at is, what if the adaptations we are currently operating on or that we are prone to adopt prove to be of very little value? For instance, the kid who grew up playing video games habitually. He's probably very good at video games. Maybe not so good at relationships, money getting, etc... Likewise, the girl who grows up cute and learns to get her way without much effort. She may eventually find herself without the means to do so if she neglects to develop her personality, her intelligence, etc...
Now, what about the woman who studies her ass off to become a doctor and then has no ability to talk to her patients, let alone have a social life. Or someone who is so socially oriented that the idea of balancing a check-book is a brain-fry. Or the meditator who gets his girlfriend pregnant and has to figure out how to integrate with the world that has been held at bay for so long...
These are challenges we all face in some way. We must. We can't possibly make every adaptation necessary to please everyone, including ourselves, all the time. It's ridiculous. We're gonna fail, we're gonna foul up, we're gonna get pinched... and we're gonna live. (mostly)
I find this proving true in my business life (where, fortunately, we have a very innovative, encouraging atmosphere), true in relationships... let me just tell you how many mistakes I've made in that domain! And in general, it's a real challenge to achieve even the little steps towards becoming the man I want to be.
The big one, though, the one that I personally feel has the most impact on this world is Parenting... becuase, just look back on your own life... even if you've grown beyond blaming & victimhood, we all have periods in our development where we curse our families, society, etc... for not responding to our adaptations in the way we believe they should. We act in a certain way that we thought was going to get us what we wanted, and !wham! we get hammered with some negative, probably unintended consequences.
Realizing we're not getting what we want is the first step to any lasting change. Still sucks though, to feel it. Better than not feeling it, though, and carrying on oblivious to the pain we are causing ourselves and others... or the potential we're failing to grow in to.
So, for me, I walk a fine line between wanting to protect my child from as much wounding as possible - both from me and from the world around us - and also, doing my best to forgive myself for my failures to do so. Especially when they are unconscious expressions of some adaptation, or lack there of, that catch me totally off guard.
It seems like every time I F-up and dust myself off, there are new, deeper, ever more subtle nuances of parenting, navigating that primary relationship with the child and co-P. As much as I love kids and being a dad, I'll be the first one to admit that I never even held a child before my daughter was born, and I never really developed the adaptations of a savvy parental type growing up. My buddy did - he helped raise his younger sibblings. I never had the privilege of that responsibility... I was playing video games.
So, if I had to sum this all up, I'd say: be tolerant of your failures, especially as a parent, and at the same time, let the pain they bring be the impetus for correcting your course quickly, and making new adaptations that can help you reach the vision you have set your sites on.
Cheers,
Craig
How to make any recipe you want, for the rest of your life...
Before I get yammering about how many crazy dietary regimes I've endured since college, let me just say that I mostly eat fish these days, and I like it. It's protein-rich, doesn't weigh me down, and I can prepare a weeks-worth in an hour... when I was on a strict budget it kept my body fueled and I still had gas money to get to work.
Corrina hates it. She ate it for months, and even finished the bowl. She hemmed and hawed, she whined and moaned. I even got us a rotisserie chicken once, just to mix it up for her - for being such a little trooper. Because, I run my life like I'm on a ship. There's limited resources, everything serves triple-duty, or it goes over-board. By about that point, she had gotten it in her head that she's a vegetarian. Fine, then why are you still eating the crispy chicken skin? Oh - she says - I'm HALF-vegetarian.
I get it.
Efficiencies of regimentation (and a sincere belief that a father gives his child a set of clear, trustable boundaries that protect and support life) have essentially dictated my weekly schedule, including shopping and cooking. Once I worked out a diet that worked for me, I standardized on a handful of food groupings. Eventually, I refined certain recipes to the point of new-age military rations. For example:
Cold Fish Cakes
1 Bag - Frozen Salmon (skinless)
1 Bag - Frozen Tilapia
1/2 Cup - Frozen Peas
1 Cup - Rice, cooked
Oregano, Thyme, Salt
Basically I throw all the fish into a no-stick pan (even stopped using oil), cook until brown, then start hashing up the thawed filets, eventually adding the rice, peas and seasonings. I pack it into about 5 empty hummus containers and eat them throughout the week.
Did I mention Corrina hates it. Especially being a pisces... she made a flyer that says "stop ceching fish and let them have babies" after I showed her a you-tube video on over-fishing: Save Our Ocean Fish
Anyway, the other day we're at Lori's getting some Eco-Paks of whole-grain cereal - another staple she abides, though I'm sure she'd prefer Apple Jacks or Captain Crunch (hurl).
She gets snippy about the salmon "saaaaalmmmmooooooooooooonnn!!!" so I tell her to pick something out. She grabs rice pasta and we agree on a lentil-tomato package of prepared Indian food. She's stoked.
We get home and she wants to learn how to cook it. I've been teaching her how to cook things like eggs and (frozen... remember, we're on a ship) vegetables . I turn to her slowly from the fridge where I'm putting food away, and in my best Marlon Brando,
"You wanna learn how to cook? Alright, I'll teach you how to cook. I'll teach you how to cook anything you want, for the rest of your life. Would you like that?"
She nods compliantly. Mesmerized.
After a moment of letting that sink in for her, I break her trance with a flourish, dropping my tone and lowering my eyes at her with a cocky smile... "read the directions"
What are YOU gonna do in 7 years?
That's what I told my daughter before her birthday this year. We delineated a shift in our relationship - like no more carrying her in my arms, etc... One of the other important shifts was in her awareness of money and how it operates.
Money is an overwhelming subject. It shows up in so many forms and it's elusive in its abstractness. We have to have a grasp on the way money is used as one or more of these three forms or shapes it takes:
Money is a representation of Value when negotiating sales or evaluating a business to purchase.
Money is an organization's Fuel to reach its objectives.
Money is the Score-Card for the games you are playing in the Market. Gerber's "Quantification"
Wow! That's abstract as shit to 7 year old, let alone a 4 year old!
OMG, I have to digress and tell you this little snipit... When Corrina was 4 I was playing with her on the living room floor. Somehow we got on the topic of money and I took the opportunity to explain to her that her financial education would be shaped by these fulcrums or developmental leaps.
The First would be when she turned 7 years old. I said, "Corrina, I will pay for Everything for you until you're 7. Then, when you're seven, I'll continue to pay for your survival needs (ref: Maslow) like food, clothes, house, etc... so I'll still buy you lunch at Panera after Karate on Saturday, but you're on your own for matinees at the $2 theatre afterward. She nods. "And when you turn 14, then beyond your bedroom at home, you're on your own, kiddo."
She pauses.
She looks me in the eyes and runs to the kitchen shouting, "Mom! Guess what - dad said he'd pay for EVERYTHING 'til I turn SEVEN!!!"
And I've held to that. And she's learned a lot of great lessons.
Before she went to Milwaukee for the summer I renegotiated my agreements with Jeni so that I gave Corrina her allowance separately from what I give Jeni. Then I told Corrina she had to earn the $25/mo, and cleaning the house doesn't count. That's what we do when we're on the same team.
She had a meltdown at the Moe's burrito joint parking lot. I told her to shape up - she didn't even know what the chores were for earning her allowance. We had lunch and I explained to her:
"What motivates me to compensate you is learning. Going above and beyond "common knowledge" is an attribute that will bring you closer to what you want in life nearly 100% of the time. So I will pay you for following the principles of solid financial planning. Jim Rohn's 70/10/10/10 plan with Tithing, Saving and Investing coming off the gross. The rest I ask that you keep and accounting of how you spend it, here's how."
Now if she keeps a record at 7 I'll be shocked. But at least she's been exposed to it.
The seeds been planted. And it was planted last summer when we bought a cool Real Estate game at a garage sale. I made her keep a balance sheet and ledger for the entire game. It made it take twice as long, but she now multiplies numbers with lots of zeros behind them as easily as she does rudimentary arithmetic.
So, now that she sees how money comes and goes, we can start exploring how planning helps utilize the stream of money to get us closer to what we want in life. It's a good journey. I'm struggling with aspects of it even today - and my father is a CPA since outta college. Never once sat me down and walked me through how to keep a check book. I'm a little more proactive than that.
My aim is for Corrina to be 100% financially self sufficient by the time she can drive. So that she can tour the world and provide herself the optimal educational experience by visiting and participating in the content of the curriculum. Like how my parents took us to Boston when I was in 5th grade. I dumped tea into the harbor, saw Plymouth Rock, etc... and the timing coincided with my 5th grade text book. I would love Corrina to be able to go to Europe and visit these sites while she's learning about them.
Hell, I'd love to organize a Curriculum that patched together modules of student vacations...
Sign Me Up!
C
Posts
