Category Archives: Motivation

never hesitate

August 26, 2015 6:31 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’m 4 years old and I’ve just been put in front of a thousand pound horse and I can’t wait to get on.  Five minutes later the horse slips in a gopher hole and rolls over me, nearly crushing me to death.  Let me try again.

I’m 22 and alone in the Colorado mountains.  I’m standing in front of a raging mountain stream that I have to cross to do an environmental report.  30 seconds later I’m being washed downstream banging against rocks.  I crawl out of the water and crawl to the road where some rangers find me and take me to the local hospital for cuts and a sprained ankle.  Two days later I’m packed and ready to head back into the woods.

I’m 27 and I’m wandering round a “bad place”.  Montrose was a no-go zone for suburban kids back in the 80s.  Where pimps and junkies would just as soon cut your throat as look at you.  Why go inside the loop when you have everything you need in the ‘burbs?  But by the mid 90s I’m hearing things out in the Richmond strip.  Stories about some clubs and restaurants inside the loop.  Around Montrose and Washington avenue.  So I lock my doors, roll up the windows and drive into the city in my Gold colored Saturn and drive round.  Still plenty of tattoo parlors but no drug dealers or junkies, no roving gangs.  Some of the boarded up brick houses are being renovated.  Just then a rock comes flying from out of the dark and dents the passenger side door.  I floor it and end up lost for the next hour till I stumble onto loop 610 and find my way home. For the next few years I would slowly begin exploring the inner loop one street at a time.

I’m 44 and standing in an overgrown wind tunnel about to try indoor skydiving.  The instructor warns me to be careful and not smash my face against the side of the tunnel.  Nothing happened.  I had a good time. Not all my adventures wind up as disasters.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t just automatically walk into dangerous situations just for the hell of it.  I’m not blind to the possible dangers.  I have hesitated at times before embarking on something new or potentially dangerous.

But overall I never find that hesitation is all that worthwhile.  For the most part I find hesitation in any part of my life has done me more harm than good and being bold has for the most part paid off.

I’ve hesitated about opportunities in life, about business decisions, about personal decisions and rarely has it paid off. You totally should hesitate when you find yourself in a totally unknown situation but if you find that you hesitate because of an imagined danger or what you think might or might not happens then I would strongly urge you to put aside that fear and try.

At the very least you’ll come out with a treasure trove of interesting stories.

Posted in: advice, attitude, decisions, interests, life in general, motivation, thought

Demons

July 9, 2015 6:36 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Plod.

 

Plod.

 

Plod.

 

Plod.

 

 

The humidity sucks the strength out of my body.  The miasma of heat and moisture hits me as I open my door and promises a miserable workout.  My legs are like two ingots of pig iron this morning and I can barely lift them anymore.  I don’t think that I’m making any progress in my fitness regimen or even in my life.

Over four years now and although I made progress at first I don’t see anymore improvement.  It’s not just my fitness but my entire life seems to be at a standstill or worse it seems to be regressing.  Things are hard.  I should just quit and give up.

 

[begin internal dialogue

 

so that’s it, is it?

Okay.  Slow down, stop, and start walking back home. It’s only a couple of miles and you can get there walking in an hour or so.

You gave it your miserable best and it wasn’t good enough.  Everyone knew it wouldn’t be. You knew it wouldn’t be.  No one will blame you.  They never expected much out of you anyways.  All those things that you think people whisper about you behind your back?  That you’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re talentless, you’re worthless.  They’re all true, aren’t they?

You told yourself long ago that eventually you’d quit.  You never had it in you to succeed and you never will.  All those plans and ideas you had were pointless fantasies.

Better to have tried and lost and all that nonsense, right?

All those people around you that succeed, that are living their dreams, that actually do something.  They’re just better than you are.

No one is going to fault you for quitting.  You won’t let them.  You’ll cocoon yourself away in a digital shell in your room for the rest of your miserable life and die alone one day and life will be better for everyone else.

Don’t even think about trying anymore.  Continuing on is pointless.  When you try there will always be pain, there will always be struggle, there will always be exhaustion. 

It. Does. Not. End.

So quit now.  You’re not making any progress.  You’re just wasting everyone’s time.  Just stop plodding along like a fool.   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      ]

.

 

..

 

 

…

 

 

 

Plod.

Plod.

Plod.

Plod.

Posted in: life in general, motivation

find what really makes you happy

May 20, 2015 6:26 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I was thinking about a study I read several years back.  It was about how children that would instinctively put off instant gratification and momentary gains and instead pursued long-term rewards would statistically go on to have more fulfilling and successful lives.

What brought this on?  Well, I suddenly realized how far into 2015 we’d gotten and how the first quarter went past in a blur and the second quarter was close to done and I hadn’t reviewed the progress of my yearly goals yet.

Why hadn’t I done this?  I suppose I could give various excuses from being too lazy to dealing with illness in March to this and that but I also have to be honest and admit I have been partly dreading this.  I haven’t been doing as well as I’d hoped to be at this point.

So I was walking in downtown Houston the other day and thinking about this.  It was after dark and downtown was mostly deserted and it was cool and quiet.  Near perfect conditions to think.

Were these goals making me happy or were they becoming obsessions that would not yield long-term satisfaction?  Was I eschewing short-term gratification to pursue these goals or just denying myself living my life for no good reason?

I mean I created these goals in order to have a better life and to do something meaningful.  I think I did a pretty good job of it as well but the thing is that for some of my goals I think that I am pouring good resources into lost causes and basically wasting them where I could instead be using them for other projects.

So I have to evaluate these goals and see if these are worth continuing on and if I just hang on a little longer that things will get better or if I’m just hanging on due to some sense of pride that won’t let me quit on these goals.

I think that’s what I meant by the title “find what really makes you happy”.  Sit down, look at these goals, and see if they will truly make you happy.

Posted in: activities, advice, goals, motivation, plans

plans vs pipe dreams: Knowing the difference and leveraging them anyways

April 20, 2015 6:39 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Just as we also have carefully thought out plans, we also have pipe dreams.

We all have those wild and crazy ideas that would be nice to achieve but we “know” just won’t ever work.  These are ideals that we may dream about at bed time or just after lunch one day.  You can think and even see them but the rational part of your mind knows that they’re impossible so it discounts them as just impractical fantasies and generally forgets about them.

On the flip side we have those carefully worked out plans that we think and re-think all the time and we “test out” and know will work because we’ve put in the time to manage expectations and to make sure they can be implemented before anything happens.  We work and live through these every day.

Obviously, it’s bad to get hung up on a pipe dream and obsess over it to the point that you can’t function.  Unfortunately I see this type of behavior too much among some of my peers.  Obsessing about some material item, over some sort of achievement, over some love that got away from them.  Many people chase these unattainable goals to the point that they disregard some or all other important aspects of their lives.

On the other hand it’s equally as bad to just live out a carefully scripted and planned life.  If you only live a planned out existence you may find that opportunities that suddenly appear and offer themselves to you will be ignored or denied because they don’t fit in with your current plans.  You may find that you deny yourself an advantage or may find that your original plan may actual be detrimental to you just because it didn’t fit in.

I think most people can tell what a plan looks like.  A pipe dream is more difficult.  We can often fool ourselves into thinking an outlandish pipe dream is really a reasonable plan.  If we sit down however and look at it carefully and analyze it bit by bit we can often see the faults in the “reasonable plan” and see it for what it really is.

But like I said above, living only a planned life can be equally bad for you.  So how can we live a balanced life where we keep our hopes and dreams alive but allow our plans to carry us ahead?  We have to strike a balance.  Live the daily life within our plans but always keep those pipe dreams at hand.  Don’t totally deny them or discount them.

Even if you do chase after your pipe dream and ultimately fail, the journey, the process of trying to achieve that pipe dream may yield unexpected benefits, may open up new vistas and worlds that you didn’t previously know about.

Pipe dreams are sometimes the only things that can keep us moving forward when things are tough.  Learn to control them, learn to tame them.  But never let them die.

Posted in: advice, goals, life in general, motivation, opportunities, plans, thought

Leadership

January 2, 2015 7:11 AM , Leave a Comment ,

“Experts in war depend specially on opportunity and expediency.  They do not place the burden of accomplishment specially on their men” – Ch’en Hao

“Now the method of employing men is to use the avaricious and the stupid, the wise and the brave, and I give responsibility to each in situations that suit him.  Do not charge people to do what they cannot do.  Select them and give them responsibilities commensurate with their abilities.” – Chang Yu

So why all the philosophical quotes?  Well I want to talk about an aspect of leadership that is seldom discussed.  What happens when a project goes wrong and the blame starts flying left and right.

In this case (and no I won’t name names) an acquaintance that works at a large company told me about a project she was involved in and how her project leader mismanaged the whole operation from start to finish.  When things started really going bad and the upper management began to take notice the manager started assigning blame left and right but of course never accepted any for himself.

In this case my friend described the project and all the challenges involved, all the tasks that needed to be done and some of the other people involved and it became fairly clear that the project manager had mishandled things primarily by not assigning people the jobs for which they were best suited for.  Senior personnel were given research jobs fit for starting staff and junior staffers were assigned tasks for which they had no training for.

The second error that the project manager committed was not making himself available for consultation and expecting the situation to resolve itself favorably.  When red flags started popping up and things were not going as the schedule demanded the manager failed to heed the warnings and take preventative measures.  He wanted everyone to stick to the original plan.

The last error and really something classless to do was to place the blame on the subordinates and not acknowledge his part in the failure.  By the way that my friend described the events it really sounded as if the project manager really believed that he was blameless.  Luckily the upper management took notice of the chain of events and took appropriate measures but the damage was already done and the project was set back several months and cost the company a lot of money and prestige with their client.

A situation that could have been easily avoided if the project manager had been more conscientious about his management of the project, had been more flexible in his approach but most of all if he had taken an active rather than a passive role in the development of the project.

 

 

Posted in: business, energy, motivation, plans, relationships

the end of the year review

December 23, 2014 6:59 AM , Leave a Comment ,

This is the end of the year review I promised months earlier.  Well since my last review post I’ve only had two major events.

The first was my entry into the world of real estate.  I took out a loan and purchased a small house in west Houston and have put it up for rent.  My hope is that I will be able to rent it for a couple of years and then sell it for a profit.  My initial plan was to try to “flip” a property quickly to generate some funds quickly but the housing market in Houston is quite competitive and good properties are hard to find.  This will take longer but I think it will be profitable.

The second event was my vacation to Costa Rica.  A bit of a headache to plan but it was so worthwhile.  You can read a recap in the previous posts.  I was somewhat sad to see my vacation end and to have to bid goodbye to my travel partner but I am already looking forward to my next vacation.

One thing I did not mention in my travel posts is that I got a lot done as far as planning my upcoming year.  I’ve laid out my goals and have edited and re-edited them until I think I have everything well planned and laid out.

If 2015 is as good or better than 2014 it will be a banner year.  At the very least I hope it will be as good as this last year.  These yearly goals have helped me immensely.  They’ve consistently allowed me to improve my life.  I’ve also enjoyed sharing the goals and the progress I’ve made on this blog.  So much so that I think I will again post 4 yearly updates in the coming year.

All I can tell you folks is to stay tuned.  It’s going to be a heck of a year.

 

Posted in: activities, goals, life in general, motivation

ebb and flow

July 30, 2014 7:11 AM , Leave a Comment ,

3:43 AM

I don’t want to do this.  I just want to skip today and sleep late.  Sit up in bed.  What will it hurt to skip a couple of days.

Sigh

I get up and start changing into my running gear

 

6:57 PM

I finished a chapter last week and I have no clue as to where to take the story now.

Sit and stare, sit and stare.  Nothing comes to mind.

Pace the room, read a magazine, look at a website.  Still nothing.  I start typing something.  anything.  Hope that a story will resolve itself from the effort.

 

9:01 AM

A pile of emails.  Requests, inquiries, return emails, phone messages.  So much to do.  Where to start?  How to start?  Where will I get the enthusiasm to tackle it all?  Start, one email at a time.

 

Energy is like that.  Some days you spring out of bed, fresh as a daisy.  Other days not so much.  When you’re young you have that energy to spare and you can disregard those low energy days.  As you age it gets more difficult.  Exercise and a good diet can help mitigate that to an extent but you also have to admit that sometimes it’s overwhelming.

But the thing is that you can’t give in to the lethargy.  Nothing good comes out of that.  You slip on one day and then another and soon you’ve got a bad habit going.  So you soldier on as best as possible.  If you’ve built up a routine over the years this will help you carry on during these spells of low energy.  Force of habit is a good motivator.  But what will get you across is just a sheer stubborn will not to give in.

You have to stand up straight and continue on regardless of how low on energy you feel.  No dramatic declarations of intent, no promises of rest as a reward at the end.  Just a determination to get things done.

Posted in: energy, exercise, goals, health, motivation

Pushing hard

January 23, 2014 7:01 AM , 1 Comment ,

I was going through my standard 6 mile run on a Saturday morning.  It was Fall and the Sun was already up.  I had slept in and I was late.  I turned and entered Hershey park from the Kirkwood road side and headed east to the Wilcrest side.

Crowds of runners and cyclists already.  I usually prefer to run odd hours to avoid this sort of thing but today I would have to put up with it.

At the quarter mile mark.  Among other reasons that I love Hershey park are the quarter-mile markers unobtrusively poking out at the side of the jogging trails.  The trail curved and I look back.  Way back I see a younger runner just starting out.  Probably about 20 years younger, taller, and obviously better suited to running than I am.

An odd thought pops up in my head.  Could I beat him to the Wilcrest side?  He was way back after all.  Why not try it?

At first I barely increase my speed.  I sneak a peek back and see he’s gaining on me steadily.  Half mile to go.  I am still ahead of him somehow.  Could I pull this off?  Suddenly this gains a new sense of urgency.  I “need” to beat him.  It has suddenly become imperative.

Quarter mile to go.  I start speeding up more.  I sneak more peeks.  He seems to have noticed what I’m doing and starts going faster and faster!  It’s suddenly become a real race.  His strides are longer than mine and with each step he gains a little on me.  A song lyric pops up in my mind from the song “The fabled hare” by Maddy Pryor.

Tongues pant, hearts thump
Closer closer, through the fields
Teeth snap, bones crack
Closer closer, at my heels

Nearer, yet and nearer
I can see the hunter’s knife
He is running for his dinner
I am running for my life

I no longer need to look back.  I can feel him right behind him.  I can hear his footsteps.  The final fork in the road just ahead.  One branch going under the Wilcrest bridge and the other branch up to street level.

Pouring in the last dregs of strength into my legs.  I am somewhat surprised to find that actually do have something left.  I can’t say that I pulled away but I did keep him at a distance and I reach Wilcrest.  He continues on under the bridge giving me a friendly wave.

I walk down the road and try to catch my breath and try to ignore my aching feet.

Near home.  A little over a mile left and I’ve recovered.  Jogging steadily there is no need for any special effort.  I can coast all the way home now.  I turn onto Hayes road.  A half mile straight road leading to my subdivision.  About halfway down the road another jogger.  Minding his own business plodding along.

I don’t know what’s gotten into me this morning.

This is too irresistible to me to pass up.  Going from the hunted to the hunter.  I speed up with barely a thought.  Not just to reach but pass this guy up before the turn off.  No anxiety this time.  I know I will catch and pass him up.  I blow past him easily and keep going at full speed all the way home.

I feel energized and pumped.  I generally avoid doing this but sometimes I have to try out my strength and see what I can do.  As long as I don’t turn it into a habit I don’t think it will be a negative.

Posted in: motivation, running

brand loyalty

January 3, 2014 7:24 AM , Leave a Comment ,

 

Style rarely comes into play when I consider making everyday purchases and is rarely a factor when making major purchases.  I tend to favor the durability and utility of an item before style or branding.  But I have to admit that it does come into play over the long haul.

This is probably not the best example, but back in the day when I used to be a Coca Cola addict I would appreciate every aspect of Coca Cola.  From the slightly citrusy taste, to the sugar levels, to the logo design and even the particular shade of red that they use.  All other soft drinks were poor copies at best.

Now to be clear I don’t think you should drink any sort of sugary soft drinks.  Considering the amount of Coca Cola that I used to drink, I am extremely surprised that I did not become a diabetic.  But I have to admit that every aspect of the Coca Cola experience was extremely well done and all the packaging that went into it made it distinct and encouraged customers to seek it out in the stores.

They have a great product and great marketing to make sure that it stays at the top of the soft drink market.  A good brand will come to symbolize satisfaction in the consumer’s mind but a great brand will get associated in that person’s mind with “feeling right”

In computers, I’ve been with the Windows operating system for so long that I get an odd feeling when I have to use a computer that uses the Apple or LINUX operating system or even when they revamped the look of the operating system like they did with Windows 8.  I wanted to reset the look of the system to the “classic” Windows style just because I like the way it worked.

It’s not just that things are done in a different way in these operating systems it’s that I don’t feel that they are doing things in a proper way.  Other options may be perfectly fine but when the consumer gets “hooked” into a particular brand then no amount of persuasion will change his mind.

When you not only deliver a good solid product but also give it a particular style all its own and you associate that style in the consumer’s mind you can own that person’s loyalty.  Even though your quality may slip from time to time, that brand loyalty will keep that customer coming back again until you fix your quality issues.

Posted in: consumerism, motivation

The barren landscape

January 1, 2014 12:01 AM , 1 Comment ,

I stand on a desolate windswept shore.  Life hasn’t had a chance to change or alter this place.  As I look from horizon to horizon I see nothing but a dull grey panorama.  Not even the sky looks that much different as it matches the land in color and somber attitude.  Behind me the sea is dark and unwelcoming.  I cannot go back.

I take a step and I alter this land permanently, my feet scratching the ground and sending up a small cloud of dust.  The alteration having a ripple effect as I move across this alien expanse.

Little mounds of dust piling up, then dunes and hills.  Seeds borne on the wind settling into the new shelters for life and setting up shop.  Green sprouting as my heavy thread continues changing the topography.

A panoply of colors as flowers bloom.  The din of noise as bees and other insects are drawn to the new life.  Birds chirp in the branches of the leafy tall trees that have recently taken root.  Foxes, rabbits, and other animals shyly watching me from the dark undergrowth.

I continue down what appears to be a country lane and top a hill to see a shining city in the horizon.

Life has come to this alien world and it is due to my efforts and my imagination.  My personality, my ideas, my spirit will populate this place.

We have to remember this when we think of the future.  This new year that is coming up, it is our barren landscape.  Or perhaps it’s a blank canvas calling for us to fill it.  However you choose to think of it, please remember that you are the architect of your future and yours will be the decision and the responsibility as to how it turns out.

Make it the future that you want it to be.

Posted in: life in general, motivation, prose