Adam’s Peace

Archive for the 'Blogging' Category

Change of Format.

Friday, November 30th, 2007

Alright… There has been enough hiding behind an idealized vision of myself.

Simply put: I’m human. I do not have all of the answers, but I have a lot of opinions.

I have a life purpose to bring peace to everybody, which is also one of the many projects that I have. Most projects need foundations if they are to succeed, and simply having a purpose, without direction, is not enough for me.

My purpose remains to bring peace to everybody. But, it needs to be real peace, both political and individual, founded on truth, with opinions and ideal situations clearly labeled.

The first hard truth that I need to share is that I have trouble identifying my own problems. I am too emotionally involved in my own life to make an objective assessment of what I’m doing wrong. I am a very prideful person who excells at escaping into alternate versions of reality in order to deal with stress.

The second hard truth is that I have many fears… Fears that when looked at objectively are irrational.

Well, it isn’t the fears themselves that are irrational. It is my reactions to them that make them irrational. For instance, I fear failure. Because of that fear, I don’t take any chances. Objectively, of course, that means that I will never succeed, since I never even tried… but at least I didn’t fail, right? I fear being judged by other people… and so, I create false masks to hide behind, so that nobody sees who I really am. Of course, when people see me wearing two different masks, they begin to judge me even more… so by avoiding judgment, I guarantee judgment.

I have several other examples, but if I point out all of my faults in one big post, I may never stop typing, and I won’t have any material for future posts.

I do have one final vice to warn everybody about: I am addicted to lying. I am making a promise now to stop lying on this blog. If I lie, I’ll come clean. If I don’t come clean, my wife will tell everyone for me.

For the record, here are the lies and half-truths so far:

I quit smoking. Actually, I made it two weeks, then picked it up again. I’ll have a future post about smoking.
I am nearly finished with TimeAgent. Actually, I lost it all when upgrading my computer last week. I did have a nearly finished version that I was about to release into Beta testing… but now, I’m back to starting it from scratch. I expect to re-begin development after I have moved, towards the middle of December.
I got a medical discharge from the U.S. Army because of a hip injury. Well, I didn’t exactly say that, but I most certainly implied it. I did get a medical discharge. I did have a hip injury while in the Army that is still bothering me today. The two are unrelated, however. I was discharged for a personality disorder… My fears of being judged definitely did not help me while in the Army, and together with a habit of lying, I couldn’t keep myself out of trouble. I served honorably and did some great things, but I didn’t have the personality of a soldier, so I took a medical discharge and moved on.
I like to clean. Well, actually, I do like to clean… when I actually do clean. I am a slob. My desk is covered in things that should have been put away weeks ago, and my litter box for my cats does not get emptied as often as it should. I hate starting to clean, but once I have set my mind to it, I enjoy it, and I find that the moment I finish cleaning and I look at what I have done, it more than makes up for it. Now, if I could only make that a habit, I would be set… and my wife would be a lot happier as well.

There might be some other things that I have said that aren’t entirely true… but that is all that I can think of right now. Like I said, though, I am making a promise to come clean about any dishonesty, and if I do lie again in the future, I will come clean quickly.

I won’t be giving advice anymore. I will be relating stories of what is happening in my own life, of the trials that I am facing and overcoming, as well as the trials that I am facing and am failing in. If this is no longer your idea of a good day’s reading, then I will be sorry to see you go, but I am glad that you are opening up more time in your day to read things that will help you more than I can, or perhaps pursue other tasks that don’t involve reading blog posts. If you decide to stay, I ask that you remind me of blunt truths when you see that I have overlooked something.

I am but an egg.

Posted in Responsibility, Blogging | 4 Comments »

Abundance Mindset

Monday, October 29th, 2007

Would anyone be shocked if I said that the famously touted Law of Abundance actually has some foundation in science?

For those who are unfamiliar with it, the Law of Abundance is an old New-Age idea that says, when you act like money means nothing, that you get money easily. At least, that’s the most common interpretation of the Law of Abundance.

Now, the Law of Abundance has a few large problems. Its main problem is that it gets over simplified far too much. If you simply start giving your money away to everybody you meet on the street, you will very quickly end up broke, with very little in return to show for it, except a few happy memories. (Yes, memories are important. If you can’t afford to make new memories in the future, though, then what is the point of happy memories now?)

The second problem with the Law of Abundance is that the people who believe they need it more are actually those who would be most harmed by its first problem.

Dependence, Independence, and Interdependence.

In his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (aff), Steven R. Covey talks about three stages of dependence. If you think of the “ideal” American life, you start out as a child, completely dependent on your family. When you leave the house, you become independent, hopefully able to take care of yourself well enough to continue surviving, if not flourish. Finally, you get married, and your spouse depends on you, just as you depend on your spouse, entering a stage of interdependence.

To many people, this first stage of dependence seems ideal… You don’t have to lift a finger, yet all of your needs are taken care of. Well, what happens if such a network were strictly enforced? If everybody were paid the same wages, no matter their rank or ability… Yes, I’m talking about Socialism, which would be a perfect form of government, if only there were perfect people to live in that government. Unfortunately, humans being the opportunistic creatures that we are, if a large number of people figured out that they could work half as hard, and still get the same pay, then only their own morals would prevent them from short-changing their neighbors. (As time goes on, and it becomes more and more acceptable to work less, the system will eventually collapse.)

What, then, of independence? Surely it has to be a good system, because so many people strive to be independent, right?

Well, it certainly is a good system. For an example, look at the subsistence farmers of Oklahoma in the 1920’s. They worked the ground themselves, most didn’t have a penny of debt, and the vast majority were able to produce so much that they could sell their excess food far and wide. Truly, Oklahoma’s farms in the 1920’s were a shining example of independence at its best.

Unfortunately, Oklahoma’s farms in the 1930’s were a tragic example of independence in the worst of times. The drought that came to be known as the Dust Bowl sent many families into ruin, destroyed most of the farms, and shattered nearly everybody’s dreams for independence in the region.

The problem with independence is that there is no backup plan. Without the ability to change back to a state of dependence easily, external environmental changes can wreak havoc on your own successes. A more modern example of an environmental change that destroys an independent person’s dreams is being fired… Without a support system in place (or a lot of cash in savings), being fired can very quickly put a person out on the streets.

So if the other two plans are so terrible, then how is interdependence any different?

Interdependence

Well actually, being independent or even dependent isn’t that terrible. Everybody goes through each of these stages at different points of their lives. If we’re lucky, part of the American Dream is complete dependence on our children, so that we can repay them for the diapers we’ve changed for them… by making them change our diapers.

Let me start out this section by reminding everybody that no system is perfect. Change always comes, and the ways that these changes manifest often change as well. Today’s information revolution is bringing more and more change at an even greater pace than seen before, and the best systems seem to have found a good balance between having redundancy and being efficient… That is, if one part of the system fails, other parts can take its place, but when all parts are working normally, there is very little duplication of work.

One example of a well balanced system is the Supermarket. In it, each person specializes in one area of the store, such as running a register, collecting carts, baking, or stocking the shelves. If a person calls in sick, though, people from other departments can easily move over and keep the department running for short periods of time.

Taking a step out, each of these stores are able to get employees from other stores in case of suddenly finding that their staff can’t handle the workload, such as when a nearby competitor closes, or in the case of a grand opening where neighborhood interest is very high and the store hasn’t properly hired a full staff yet.

At another step outward, we find the stores buying from the suppliers, and the manufacturers selling to the stores, as well as buying raw materials. If one specific company goes out of business, there are plenty of other ones available to keep this large system running smoothly. One step further out and we find that the global economy is a network of these interdependent relationships, built up of an unimaginable number of relationships that individuals have with different businesses and hobbyists. Each individual within this network (and I’m including companies as individuals here) would be completely incapable of matching their current value, if they had to do everything themselves.

Imagine for a moment that you run a candy manufacturing business. Common wisdom says that you need to get suppliers for your raw materials, and you need stores to buy your candy from you, so that the end consumer can buy them as well. Well, why do you need all of this? Can’t you just hire your own farmers who will tend and nurture the sugar cane? Can’t you make a sugar refinery, and aren’t there trucks available for sale so that you can ship the raw materials yourself?

How about the stores? Can’t you just build a storefront in a prime location, ensuring that your candy doesn’t appear on the same shelves as your competitors?

Well, you could do all of that, and many businesses strive for this. What happens if there is a drought, though, and you can’t water your sugar cane? What happens if your storefront fails a health inspection? Also, while you’re working on growing your production from the bottom to the top, what happens to the core of your business? Is your business still one of making candy, or has it become a business of managing a closed supply chain?

Since many of my audience are bloggers, let me ask about your own sites. Do you recognize the interdependence that you are already engaging in?

The first sign of interdependence that I see common to all bloggers is their relationship with their website hosting providers. Everybody has a choice to either buy hosting that is managed by another company, or to set up servers for themselves. Many people are either unable or unwilling to host their sites in their garages, so we create a relationship where we become the hosting company’s clients. Without people willing to pay for website hosting, the hosting companies would go out of business very quickly… and without hosting companies, the vast majority of sites out there today simply would not exist, so we have created an interdependent relationship.

Personally, I have tried to host a site out of my garage, and I’ll say from experience that it certainly wasn’t easy. With tools like Apache, PHP, and MySQL being freely available, and with generous support for these products provided by countless volunteers, learning how to set up a website on my home computer was simple enough… but managing the physical connection between my computer and the rest of the world was well beyond my patience. By buying hosting, I was able to leave the headaches of managing the server behind, and I’m now able to concentrate more on the site itself.

Interdependence is the Law of Abundance

So, I promised to explain in objective terms how the Law of Abundance works. Here it is, in a nutshell.

The basics of the Law of Abundance say that when you give out money, more money comes to you. Interdependence says that when you set up the right relationships, you build efficiency and flexibility. Looking at what money really is (once you get past the idea that those coins and paper are money… they’re only symbols for money), you find that the value that you give to other people is what helps you to build a relationship. Value can be anything, from information posted on a website, to the exchange of coins and paper, or food, or shelter and land, or anything that a person might want or need.

So, when we give people money, such as when we’re experimenting with the Law of Abundance, we’re simply exchanging value… and that value builds a relationship. If we’re lucky, then that relationship will give us some value in return, such as insight into designing a site that performs well in search engines, and we enter into an interdependent relationship.

The Law of Abundance is simply saying that it is alright to take the first move to make friends with someone. The more friends that we have, the more likely we are to gain some benefits that will help us all.

Final Words

I’ve heard a lot of people say that the money has to come from somewhere, and they don’t feel right taking it. Well, that’s only partially true… An often misunderstood fact about economics is that the amount of value (just another word for money) in the world is limited only by how many people are creating value. The amount of currency (those coins and paper we call money) is limited, but the more value that we create, the more valuable the currency becomes… and the more that we trade our currency around, the more it shows that we’re providing value. So, don’t be afraid to accept cash from someone… just be sure to create as much value as you feel is justified, then give that cash to someone else.

Posted in Relationships, Blogging, Personal Finances | 4 Comments »

Personal Development (Online) Authors List

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007

Well, I admit that I was a little surprised that I got an email in my secret email account that is only used for administrating this blog. I’ve put this site on hold for a little bit as I put my energy towards finishing up Placebo, concentrated on finding a new job (because I can’t afford to work in retail anymore, with my student loans coming due), and working on my relationships, with myself, my family, coworkers, and everybody else that I come in contact with more than once.

Unfortunately, it seems that I’ve been neglecting the relationships centered around this site… partly because some of the relationships are ones that I can easily reinforce through email, and partly because… well… I don’t really want to market this blog.

Yes, I want people to read it, and for it to make a positive effect on people’s lives… but I don’t want it to become a “mainstream” blog, where I can’t remember any but the most persistent commenter’s name… and I most certainly don’t want to blog just for money. After all, I program to get money… (that, and I’m addicted to programming… Might as well get paid for what you can’t resist doing, right?) That’s why I haven’t gone out on commenting sprees, or chased through massive repositories of social links in search of that one magic[k]al site that will put me at number 1 in Technorati and Google. Gaining a bunch of faceless and nameless readers just isn’t worth it to me. It’s the ones who I can name… who I can count, or who I can at least infer from usage logs… who I care about.

Anyways, that was just my rant of the night. On to the main topic.

The email that I got was notification that I’ve been tagged by Priscilla Palmer of her eponymous site PriscillaPalmer.com to include a list of personal development authors on my site, and add those who I read.

Unfortunately, I can only name one additional person who is not already on this list. Like me, this person has stopped writing temporarily, waiting for more information and for a good topic to come around. Unlike my site, though, her site is actually useful for people who like to study the inner workings of the human mind… especially in the developmental stages.

So, though her husband has already made the list, I am adding Emily G. W. Lilly with her site The Science of Waldorf Education.

And without further ado, here is my revised list. I will make it a point to schedule this page to be synchronized with the master list monthly. For the up-to-date version, please visit The Personal Development List began by Priscilla Palmer.

Aaron Potts at Today is That Day

Adam Alexander at Adam’s Peace

Adam Kayce at Monk at Work

AgentSully at Life Learning Today

April Groves at Making Life Work For You

Ash aka Mr. Biggs at One Powerful Word

Al at 7pproductions.com

Alan Torres at Made to Be Great

Alex Shalman at AlexShalman.com

Alexander Kjerulf at The Chief Happiness Officer

Alexys Fairfield at Unraveling The Spiritual Mystique

Albert Foong at urbanmonk.net