Addition By Subtraction

I don't really like the idea of New Year's Resolutions because I'm a big believer that a person should always be trying to improve themselves.  There's nothing special about a new year that makes self-improvement any different than any other time of the year.

I haven't noticed as many posts from Facebook friends as I typically have in the past, but the ones that I do see are mostly about things they want to add in their life or they are very vague resolutions like being healthier, saving money, being nicer, etc.

How to make a change.  See, it's simple!

I'm no expert in goal setting, but I have done a pretty damn good job of making improvements and bettering myself in the past five years.  What has worked for me is getting totally obsessed with whatever it is that I am trying to do.  It may not be healthy, good for relationships, or provide balance, but I definitely get shit done.

When I go after a new goal or try to do something new, I'm always super motivated in the beginning, like most most people tend to be, but after a bit of time I start to get bored.  Let's take guitar for example, since this is the newest thing that I've picked up.  In the past, I've done the methodical way of learning and have failed 3 or 4 times.  I bought the books, learned some of the theory, played Old McDonald from the books, but eventually got bored.  I took the slow and steady approach and it did not work for me.

What I did this time (and did the same thing for learning bass and drums) was that I figured out what exactly I wanted to do and put in tons of time right away until I could do it.  I took advantage of my motivation in the early stages and went wild until I got it down.  I didn't worry about any of the technical skills.  I found a song I wanted to play and I learned the three chords I needed to play it.  Then when I found another song with a new chord, I learned that one.  Now I can play about ten different chords fairly well and that covers maybe 80% of the songs out there.  When I come across a new chord in a song that I want to learn, I will learn that chord.  This kept learning fun and interesting.  Don't work on any skills that won't directly and immediately move you closer to your goal.

With drums, my goal was to be good enough to play in a band so I went all out, found people to play with and practiced over and over for hours until I could play the songs that I played.  I didn't worry about cultivating any other drumming skills except for the skills I needed to achieve my goal.  Now that I've gotten over the learning curve and I'm having fun, I've started learning some of the more technical skills and things that aren't as much fun, but now I know how some of those skills can be applied so it's worth learning them.

I can also apply this to life.  I haven't totally defined my goals, but I know some of them.  I want to have as many experiences as possible with the people I care about and enjoy my time with them.  Whenever I am presented with an option or a choice regarding things to do, I can ask myself if it will move me closer to my goals.  As much as I possibly can, I am going to keep removing things from my life that don't increase my enjoyment of life and add in other things that do.

An example here is that I have removed about 95% of my TV time from my life.  The only time I watch TV is if there is a specific show I want to watch.  Even then, I order it off of Google Play or watch it on Netflix. I have watched about 5 hours of NFL football this season and maybe 5 minutes of NBA basketball.  There are times when I would enjoy sitting down and watching a game, but overall, I have gained much more from eliminating TV than I have lost.  There is no way that I would be two years through school and be as good at music as I have gotten if I had TV in my life.  I also would've spent more money and I probably would've gained weight.

Now don't take all of this as me saying that I am better than others because I have made improvements and reached some goals that I put out there for myself.  I am only stating that this is what worked for me.  I know the goals that I have reached are goals that many other people have and they may be struggling to reach them just as I was.  Maybe you can take some of these methods and it will help you reach your goal.  Maybe it won't help, I'm not sure.  Like James Altucher always says on his blog, you need to choose yourself because no one else is going to choose you for you.  You have to care more about your goals than anyone else does. If you don't make it a priority, no one else is going to force you to do the things necessary to reach your goal. Take some personal responsibility and make it happen.

We Are Small

So this is Earth. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, every one that has ever lived is in this picture. We are on a rock traveling through space around a burning ball of hydrogen that is traveling around the center of an ordinary Galaxy in a universe with billions of other galaxies. 

You are there.  

I can see why this scares people and why some choose to believe in a god. I don't, but it's cool if you do, just don't go killing anyone in his name.

Anyways, everything anyone has ever done, everything we think is important, our job, our friends, everything is on that little dot and will most likely never leave it.

Knowing that, why do we stress about things? Why do we worry about what another person thinks? Why do we spend even a second doing things that don't make us happy?

We're all going to be on our deathbed before we know it and we're not going to care about much of the things we spent our time doing. Make the most of it doing the things you love, take chances, and dream big. 

I Won the Lottery

I am 32 years old without a lot of money.  Some would call me broke.

Somewhere out there is a man with a lot of money.  More than he could ever spend, but he is unhappy.  He is running short on the one thing that I have a lot of......  and he can't buy it.  Even if I wanted to sell it to him I couldn't.  This man spent all of his earning a bunch of money and now he regrets it.

I'm not breaking any new ground here, but what I have that he doesn't is time, barring an unforseen accident, cancer, etc.  According to the Death Clock , I have 1,788, 699, 820 seconds left to live and those seconds are ticking away.  It says I will die on Septermber 15, 2070 at 88 years old.  I'm not sure how it calculates that number, but I assume it's based on statistics.

The good news is that seems like a long time.  I have 56 years and about 8 months left to live.  I don't really need to worry about getting things done right now because I have a lot of time.  Go talk to any older person and they will tell you that time goes by very quickly and they wish that they would have taken advantage of their youth, done more things, and experienced more places.  They would've said yes to more people, places, and things.

Now back to the old man with lots of money and little time.  Is he richer than I?  Is he more wealthy than I am?  Our most valuable asset in anything we want to do in life is time.  If you have it, you are wealthier than any billionaire could ever be.  If you don't have it, then all the money in the world isn't going to help you.

People play the lottery hoping to get lucky and win a bunch of money, but they don't realize that they are already luckier than they could ever imagine.  We're here, somehow, and we're living life with nothing in front of us but time to do whatever we want.  Now the question is, how will we spend our fortune?

My New Year's Revelation

I remember when I was younger, everyone always said to go to college and get a degree.  Get a good job with good benefits and you'll be happy.  I know they meant well and that was the way the world worked for them when they grew up.  There was no way for them to know how much the world would change in the next 30 years.  There's never a way for us to know.

When I was a kid people didn't have cell phones, they didn't use the internet, they wanted a good job with benefits, they wanted someone to take care of them.  They wanted to give up freedom for security.  They got jobs with big corporations, worked in cubicles, got their benefits, went home and watched tv, had 2-3 kids, and died at 30 while they lived to be 70.  If that makes a person happy, then good for them, but I think those people were fooling themselves.  Nobody wants to be near the end of their life and look back at a boring life. I know that's not what I want.

I want more.  I was told when I got those things that I would be happy.  I just needed to get there.  Well, where is "there?"  I'm supposed to get to a certain place in life and then just be content, happy, and quit improving?  I don't believe life is about getting somewhere and then stagnating.  To me, being happy means having something to work towards, having goals, learning new things, making changes, always trying to be better, doing new things, meeting new people.  I don't think I will ever "arrive."  To other people that, scary, weird, dumb, irresponsible, etc.  To me, that's exciting, that's life.

I'm not sure what is coming next for me or where I'm headed, but I do know that it's going to be fun and I'm going to have a blast.  The only things I truly need in life are friends, family, a place to live, and food.  If I've got that then I can be happy.  I don't need a TV, pictures on the wall, curtains over the windows, a nice lawnmower, a super nice car, or anything else that people slave away at their job for.  I'd rather have none of those things if it means I can have great experiences with family and friends.

If I were to buy those things that I don't need, I would be trading away those hours I spent working to buy it for a thing that I really don't need in my life.  I'd rather trade my time earning money for awesome experiences.  Or better yet, trade away less time because I don't need as much money to enjoy life.  In a perfect world, I wouldn't need any money for anything and I could just spend my whole life enjoying the things and people I love.  We're not here on this planet living this life just to achieve some arbitrary goal that society sets out for us that makes us think we've "made it."  I don't need to own a house to be happy, I don't need two cars, a garage, or any of that stuff.

It's time for me to continue on the path I've been on.  I will continue to remove things from my life that I don't need instead of adding things to my life and making life more complicated.  Less is more.

Music is Awesome

The awesome thing about music is that five guys making some noise on their instruments can get 100,000 people to all feel the same thing.  Can't wait to play again on Saturday, on a little smaller level than AC/DC. 

What Would Happen If We Were The Highest Version of Ourselves?

Live the highest version of yourself.  I have always liked the saying "Do what you can, when you can, the best you can."  This still applies because it is not possible do something you can't do or to do something when you can't do it because if you ARE able to do it, then you just proved yourself wrong. 

The last part is what I have had a problem with and what I believe many others have had a problem with.  Doing things the best that we possibly can.  This applies to everything.  Most people will do the minimum amount to get by, not to get fired, not to get in trouble, etc.  The easiest way to be different and set yourself apart is to always be the best version of yourself.  Always go the extra mile and do something that people don't expect.  This is so rare in the world that you will be remembered and you will make an impression.  People will see you as someone that is different and someone that they want to associate with.

Everyone has a picture of who they are and what they believe in their mind.  What is your picture?  My picture of the highest version of myself is someone that helps others every chance he gets, he eats healthy, exercises, is a loving husband and parent, among many other things.  I won't list them all. 

I do not see the highest version of myself as someone that is out drinking every weekend, sitting on the couch watching TV all day, being rude to my friends or wife, or being undependable.  So why do I do some of those things sometimes?  I talk a good talk about how I want to be all of those good things, but then I sabotage myself, as I'm sure you and many other people do as well. 

I haven't figured out exactly why I do that, but I'm working on it.  I have ideas about it.  One theory of mine is that in my mind, I don't really think that I deserve all of the great things I would have in my life if I lived the highest version of myself.  I don't know if it's something in my past, the mistakes I have made, the people I have let down, or something else, that makes me feel like I don't deserve what would come if I was the highest version of myself. 

I really think this is one of the main purposes of life.  Fulfilling our potential and creating ourselves to be exactly what we want ourselves to be would lead to an immense amount of satisfaction and fulfillment.  This may seem selfish, all of this focus on ourselves, but think how much more of a difference we could make in the lives of others if we were fulfilled and in a good state of mind.  If we are having negative thoughts and unhappy, how much of a difference can we ever make in someone else's life?  It's much harder because we are so preoccupied with our own dilemmas and feelings of hopelessness.  I think we can only make a real difference after we have our own house in order. 

I don't know if any of this is actually true, but like I wrote in my last post about experiencing our own lives, I am going to try to figure it out for myself and see if it's true for me.  I'm not just going to go off of what other people say.  I think we should all do the same. 

Make Up Your OWN Mind

I just got started reading a book called "Conversations With God" and it has been very interesting so far.  Yes, I'm an atheist so you're probably wondering why I'm reading this book.  That would be the expected question, but it also reveals that you probably don't have a very open mind.  I firmly believe that if a person thinks that they know everything and aren't always questioning what they think or believe, that they will become stagnant and life will become pretty boring.  It's always a good thing to learn and read about things that might take you out of your comfort zone.

So far, I can say that this book isn't really a "religious" book.  It makes claims that all of the religions of the world are a myth so I can jump on board with that assessment.  It also claims that all there really is in the world is love, we just haven't been able to master that yet.  I can also agree with that.

This brings me to the paragraph in the book that made me want to sit down and write a little bit. 

"Very few of the value judgments you have incorporated into your truth are judgments you, yourself, have made based on your own experience.  Yet experience is what you came here for-- and out of your experience were you to create yourself.  You have created yourself out of the experience of others.  If there were such a thing as sin, this would be it:  to allow yourself to become what you are because of the experience of others."

This is an awesome way to look at things.  If you look at the statistics, a person is always very likely to believe in the religion of their parents.  They also usually support the same political party and have the same beliefs as their parents.  They are more likely to cheer for the team that resides in their city or state, because that's what others do. 

When parents force their beliefs on their children, they are robbing them of the process of discovering who they really are.  When kids are indoctrinated into a religion (or atheism), we take away the experience of letting them figure out who they are.  If they believe something just because we believe it, then they are not really their own person, they are just an extension of us. 

I know that getting out of our current belief system is very hard, but it can be done.  I went from being a believer in God to being an atheist based on the evidence that I found.  If I found sufficient evidence in the opposite manner, I would change my beliefs again.  I also know that it is very hard for us not to push our beliefs on others when we think we have the right answers, especially as parents, because we want our children to learn from our mistakes.  But again, this robs our children of experiencing life for themselves. 

This is something that I am always working on in my parenting, to let my children make their own mistakes and come to their own beliefs in their own way.  Now I have realized that I also need to do the same for other beliefs and with other people.  Everyone needs to discover their own beliefs for themselves and stop repeating what they have learned from parents and other people while growing up.  Step back from all of your beliefs and examine them from an outside perspective.  Do you really believe them or is just what you've always believed, so it's easier to just go with the flow?  If it's what you've always believed, devour every piece of information you can about that subject and see if you still believe that.  Read about things that disagree with your stance.  Challenge yourself, force yourself to grow.  Experience things for yourself instead of letting others experience them for you.