Adam’s Peace

The Web Entrepreneur Tyler Cruz, owner of a very popular blog and the mastermind behind Publisher Spot, a repository for very high quality ad network reviews has asked me a question. In fact, it isn’t just any old question, but it is an extremely thoughtful question that goes to the core of human nature.

Before I get to his question, though, I would like to spend a few paragraphs introducing Tyler, his blog, and Publisher Spot.

I first became acquainted with Tyler’s work after reading a top-ten list of entrepreneur related blogs about four months ago. I added each blog to my list of subscribed feeds, then slowly started the process of weeding through their content to decide which blogs I wanted to continue reading. After removing the blogs that simply advertised for their e-books, or those which consistently gave partial feeds that failed to catch my interest, I was left with a couple that I really liked. Tyler’s is now at the top of my list because he posts consistently, he writes about relevant topics, and he has a sense of humanity in the way that he writes.

What are these relevant topics? The topic of motivation is one of my favorites, and it is expressed in his personal challenge to work for 40 hours in a week. His first and second attempts show just how hard this is, when he is the master of his own time and is not the slave to a clock. His third attempt shows that what he needed was a challenge in the form of learning a new skill, and his fourth attempt shows his overwhelming success as he truly grabs his challenge by its ears and holds on for a wild ride. Tyler also talks about other topics of interest to online professionals, including his taxes, advertising networks, and Guitar Hero. (By the way, I’m also addicted to Guitar Hero as well, though I can barely pass half of the songs on the Hard setting.)

One of my favorite posts by Tyler is titled Deal or No Deal or Break Your Legs, where he takes a comical approach in explaining that there should be more risk involved in the game show Deal or No Deal.

His new site, which he has been launching for a couple of months, is Publisher Spot. This new site reviews advertising networks fairly, comparing them against each other and listing their pros and cons, how to use them to maximize your profits, and how to get started in using it. I can personally attest to the quality of the reviews, as I took on his challenge of reviewing AGLOCO in exchange for being the person who recruits him. Despite giving my best effort, I came in second (out of two applicants, so really, I was the worst ), as Tyler made the wise choice of selecting the best review. If I were far more ambitious with monetizing this blog, or any other site that I may create in the future, Publisher Spot would be my first stop in finding the best advertisers.

Now that I’m done touting Tyler’s accomplishments, it’s time to address his question.

If you could have everything and anything, what would it take to make you completely and hopelessly happy. Not just happy, but truely happy. I guess I’d define this as the moment when you don’t think about such things anymore, but are just enjoying life, and couldn’t ask for anything more.

Try to think of this in the relation of realism, so wishing for “peace on earth” isn’t really an option, but you could choose to be a billionaire, healthy, and living in a tropical massive tree house with family. Would that make you purely happy though, or would you still have times when you’d want more. Is it part of the human condition to want more, even when you have everything?

People always want more, and even people who say they are perfectly happy and couldn’t ask for another thing, I’d still be willing to bet that from time to time their mind does wander off to want more.

What would make me happy as an individual? I have actually thought about this quite a bit…

A lot of people say that money can’t buy you happiness, but after reporting $2,000 in taxable income last year, I would have to disagree. (Actually, I had about $12,000 in unreportable income in the form of the Montgomery GI Bill’s education allowance, and $6,000 in deduction, including tuition, which brings me up to a gross income of $20,000.) Money itself doesn’t bring happiness, but the use of money does, most definitely, allow a person to be happy.

So, with the U.S. government correctly believing that I’m poorer than dirt, I would have to say that money, at least in modern society, is one requirement for happiness. Money only brings happiness to the poor, though… After your basic needs are met, money starts to matter less and less. This actually leads people into a common trap. Since, when a person is poor, money does indeed buy happiness, people get into the habit early on of gathering money to be happy. After the basic needs are met, though, and money stops buying happiness, this habit of gathering money to be happy starts to lead people into a spiral of misery, as they take on more and more stressful jobs to earn more and more money.

This leads to my first criteria of happiness… to have enough income to always be able to meet my basic needs. I estimate this to be around $50,000 per year before taxes based on the cost of living for where I want to live. If this comes in the form of passive or blogging income, then so much the better.

The second criteria comes from my experience of video games. I find that the games which I enjoy the most are the ones where I can find a difficulty level just one step above what I’m capable of. If the game is too easy, I quickly lose interest. If the game is too hard, I become upset and stop playing.

I noticed this same attitude reflected in many different parts of my life. Throughout my years as a slave to the public education system, I found the “games” to be too easy, so I lost interest. Unfortunately, my grades suffered as a result, and I was eventually put into special education classes, despite consistently scoring extremely well on any test that I took. I simply wasn’t interested enough in homework to even bother thinking about it. (I should have taken a page from Steve Pavlina and pulled out my crayons and cardboard boxes.) While I was in the Army, my personality type was simply incompatible with being a leader of other soldiers. Since being promoted beyond the rank of Specialist was impossible for me, I stopped trying altogether, despite being one of the most technically adept soldiers in my platoon.

With programming, though, I am constantly faced with challenges that are just barely beyond my skill level and knowledge. Because I can always push myself a little bit harder, learn new things, and get immediate results, I have come to be at the top of my class in college. The only real difference is that the challenge isn’t easy, but it isn’t impossible either, so I truly enjoy the process. I enjoyed the process of writing the review of AGLOCO as well, as I learned many things about my own writing style, so despite being the worst of the applicants (all two of us), it was a very rewarding experience.

So, the second criteria of being happy is to have a steady stream of challenges that are just beyond my reach.

Is it part of the human condition to want more, even when we have everything? Absolutely. It isn’t getting more that increases our joy, it is the process of working for more that increases our joy.

I am at my happiest when all of my bills are paid and I have just accomplished something. The accomplishment could be as simple and mundane as cleaning my apartment. For a few hours afterwards, I can look back at the work I have done, look at the results, and truly smile, knowing that I made a difference. The same goes for writing posts in this blog. Thinking of topics doesn’t bring me joy… Depending on what I write about, I could be deeply troubled while I’m writing, but once I hit the Publish button and view the post in its public form for the first time, I can truly say that I am happy.

Now, don’t get me wrong… I have dreams for a large mansion, and I’ve even drawn up a basic floor plan, which includes a bowling alley and theater in the basement, but owning it wouldn’t make me happy… Earning it will.

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If you have a question about peace, in any of its forms, feel free to use the Contact Form or leave a comment on this post. If you would like to add to this answer in any way, feel free to leave a comment here.

Edit: By the way, for those of you reading the feeds only, there’s more information in the comments.

The Tag

Slade has tasked me, as well as several other people, to respond to a tag that he has created.

The tag is designed to get his readers to stop and think about their relationship with money, and to install a healthy relationship.

This is a very object-oriented exercise, but as most people out there don’t program computers, I’ll leave the technical jargon out of it.

The task at hand is to personify your concept of Money, and identify its human qualities, then to create a new concept of money that you can have a healthy relationship with.

Old Money

Several people have already taken part in this tag, and have described their old money as the filthy rich, who care nothing about individuals, only about its own appearances. I can certainly see that as a good description of money, as far as most of society sees it. I tried to visualize Money in an Armani suit, teasing me with the promise of riches if I could just feed his ego, yet never quit delivering.

It didn’t work. That wasn’t my relationship with Money at all. It was close, but not close enough.

Instead of an Armani suit, he wore torn, old rags. Instead of feeding his ego, I had to feed his addiction. Old Money, to me, is a drug addict, and I got as much out of him as anyone can expect to get from a drug addict. He talked cool and made promises, but all too often, I saw him slumped in a corner with a blank stare on his face, with all of his dreams torn and shattered, in peices on the floor around them, as he had to scavenge them to get just one more fix and fight one more craving. He wasn’t even happy to be high anymore, he was just deathly afraid of the withdrawal, and his few lucid moments were spent gathering the resources he needed just to fight off another craving. His addiction was becoming more and more expensive, and he couldn’t function normally any more… I was there to enable him to keep up his addiction, and he loved me for it, but he couldn’t repay me in any way, not even emotionally any more.

New Money

Slade’s experiment really opened my eyes… Who ever thought of personifying an abstract concept like money? After identifying what I saw money as, I began to work on finding a new Money who I could have a relationship with. I don’t care about the gender, or their appearance… What I’m looking for in the personification of money is a person who doesn’t need me, but enjoys my company. I want someone who can teach me, but isn’t too proud to listen to my arguments either. I want someone who can take a joke, but who can also realize the seriousness of any situation. Most of all, I need Money to be responsible, patient, and responsive. I’m tired of the blank stares for extended periods of time, punctuated by panic and chaos… I need someone vibrant and alive, without being excessive.

I found a martial arts teacher. Jujitsu, to be precise.

His Lessons

His first lesson to me was to see money as more than just an abstract concept, which flows through some abstract economy… See it as a force, which I can direct. It flows through me, and it flows through everything around me. I can be stubborn about how it flows, disrupting its currents, and slowing it down, or I can relax, be responsive, and speed up its progress. He told me that money, like water, is stagnant and diseased when it is still, but vibrant and alive when it flows. Hoarding money causes it to go stagnant, but if you let all of it go, then when the lean times come, I won’t have anything to support myself… Keeping it in motion without letting it slip away is a great balancing act, but if we understand how to keep it flowing while in our hands, then it is nearly effortless.

He also used an analogy of opening a door with two knobs. If I pulled on the knob closest to the hinges, then I’m wasting energy just to get the door in motion. If I pull on the knob furthest from the hinge, then I may have to pull further, but the door will be much easier to open. If I seek money closest to the storehouse of money, i.e., the corporations, then I will have a very hard time getting that door open, but if I go away from that storehouse, and find my own unique handle, then the door opens much more easily.

He also told me to program, since that is my strength… but don’t force the programming, let it come. Simply keep myself in the right position, ready to act, comfortable, and when a problem presents itself, sidestep it and push it where it needs to go from behind. If the problem attacks me, move its force, so that it stops being a problem.

It is all a lot to think about, and I have many lessons to learn, but this new Money has promised to give me lessons that are only barely out of my reach, and as I master them, I will have the ability to apply them more thoroughly than I thought possible before.

Physically, New Money is a white male, skinny and toned. He appears to be in his mid-thirties, with smile lines accenting his eyes. He has an air of confidence that comes from within, rather than with what he gains from outside of himself. He never acts out of desperation or fear, but he is always calm, happy, and at peace, even when he is gathering energy and showing off his lightning fast moves and feats of skill.

Other Abstracts

This exercise has prompted me to examine many of the other abstract concepts in my life in greater detail. Reading the comments on Slade’s blog about other people’s experiences in this area has also led to greater thinking, and I’m at the cusp of a decision.

Many years ago, I performed an experiment where I created a pantheon of gods, based partly on my limited understanding of the Greek and Roman systems, with a heavy polarity between good and evil as a throwback from my then-recent experiences with Christianity. The gods began acting on their own accord, after I had named each of them, which leads me to a concept of “Willful Invention.” Many people recognize this as the Law of Attraction, as Intention Manifestation, or as Magick… What if we aren’t limited to influencing things on the physical and spiritual planes, but that we can also create real deities?

My Path

Now, I don’t want to start a new religion… That isn’t my purpose. I could, however, provide a framework for others to work out their own personal pantheons of the abstract entities working within their own lives. Just as with this experiment with Money, we could change our relationships with these abstracts, and even change their basic qualities.

Jung has identified several abstract concepts that are easily personified, in the form of the Anima/Animus, as well as the Shadow. It may not be wise to change the behavior of these integral parts of our own psyche, but we can change our relationships with them, understand them, and learn from them. There are plenty of external abstract entities out there as well, such as corporations and institutions who we can personify so that we can talk with them directly and understand them… Maybe a corporation really isn’t soulless… Its soul simply isn’t listened to.

I’ll continue this experiment in the comments section… Please, join in, because, as Money has told me, a weight carried by many is easier to handle than the same weight carried by only one.

If anyone has been following Steve Pavlina’s latests posts on his blog, you’ll notice that he is using the terms Lightworker and Darkworker quite a bit to describe people who are motivated either by love or by fear exclusively. It should be noted that these labels only apply to the far extremes of the scale he is working on, and the vast majority of people are in the middle, looking at one side or another.

I don’t like the terms Lightworker or Darkworker, as it implies that the “dark” side is only concerned with evil acts, while the “light” side is only concerned with good. A person who is motivated by selfishness can be just as saintly as a person motivated by love; they simply have different reasons for doing the acts of good works. As hard as it is to understand, a person motivated by love is also capable of doing acts that many would consider vile and demonic, simply because the concept of good and evil is a judgment that individuals make, largely based only on their own subjective observations. For lack of a better label, though, I’ll continue to call each group by the name that the Pavlinas have given them, Lightworkers and Darkworkers. They certainly do sound better than “loveworkers” and “selfworkers.”

If you are reading this blog, the chances are that you want to increase your capacity and tendency to love, which puts you on the path to being a Lightworker. (Side note: Peace is possible for Darkworkers, using many of the same methods, but the drive for external security is a major stumbling block, and I don’t know how to overcome it so that the typical Darkworker can achieve peace.) Lightworkers tend to be very creative, in terms of wanting to create something of value, then see about being rewarded for it later, if at all. Many, many Lightworkers are found holding volunteer positions, and most feel uncomfortable asking for payment for helping someone out.

The problem is that if you are volunteering all of your time, and not receiving something in return, then you aren’t being as effective as you can be. In most societies, if a person is to be effective enough to have any time to themselves, they need to be earning some money somehow. If all of your “Lightworking” is done on a volunteer basis, then you have to spend time on earning money, usually through a full time job. If you can combine the two, though, then you can spend all of your time improving everybody’s situation. Right now, I’m working for a “light side” company, which researches and produces medical implants, such as spine supports and joint replacements… All of my time is devoted to serving others, and I’m getting paid for it. Unfortunately, I’m not yet financially independent enough to be able to choose my own tasks, so while I’m helping others, I also know that I could help far more people more directly than simply streamlining the manufacturing process of implants. Also, being a programmer for this company can be done just as well by a Darkworker, or even by someone who isn’t aligned to either selfishness or love. My time still isn’t being used as effectively as possible, because I’m just now beginning to feel comfortable with asking for money for helping others. (In fact, on Saturday, the donate button will be making its comeback, in case anyone wanted to drop something in my tip jar.)

So, seriously think about this. If you are a Lightworker, or at least working towards that goal, then you need an income from your lightworking. If your lightworking is not providing an income, then you either have to give up your time, or you have to give up other resources (car, house, regular meals, etc.), which prevents you from helping others as effectively as possible.

One thing that you could do, whether you are a Lightworker, Darkworker, or unaligned, is to join AGLOCO (direct link to the AGLOCO site), because the only resource that it takes from you is screen real-estate and a fractional amount of time with managing it, and while the viewbar is operating, you aren’t only earning money for yourself, but you are also earning money for everybody else in the program, which is definitely a very “lightworker” thing to do.

Another thing that you can do is start a blog of your own and share your own experience and advice. As you write more and more content, the revenue from ads increase, until you are able to support yourself full time with your blog.

There are many other ways to increase how efficient you are with lightworking… Simply open your eyes to the opportunities that are in front of you, and be ready for a wild ride.