Soul.

Just discovered this. Dope!

Funky ass Sunday morning!

Wow! 5 people on one guitar and a great song/cover. I had to watch this twice.

Still on that Margie Joseph tip right now. Breakdown around 1:20 has so much swagger. Feels good. 

So much SOUL! This cut is deep. Damn. 

If everything is either black or white then you have to assume that if you aren’t perfect, you are a failure. Learn to accept the grey zone. Embrace nuance.

I had a dream about someone I’ve been trying to forget. We haven’t spoken in a while. In the dream, I was at a party sitting on some steps. She walked in but she didn’t notice me, so I nudged her leg as she walked past me. She looked down. I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded. She didn’t nod back. She mumbled “we’re just two random people” and walked away.

Later, a strange man and I explained to one of my friends how he would go to a small city in Europe, gain the trust of the people, become the police chief and then force criminals to pay dues to operate in his city. From there, he would create an empire.

In summary: dreams are weird. Lets not try and read into them too much.

To think of myself as a genius would make me quite the opposite.

If you know me then you know that I’m not big on holidays. Christmas, St Valentines day, even birthdays aren’t really that big of a deal to me. For some reason, however, New Years escapes this rule for me. 

Maybe it’s the epic reality of time’s continuous, unstoppable, irreversible flow setting in. Whatever it is, it makes me want to set goals. It’s the perfect opportunity for me to analyse my life and make positive changes. 

I’m posting my goals here. Perhaps they will inspire your own goals/resolutions! Here they are:

• Less bullshit - more work. 
• More photography - Edit and post at least one picture every week
• Minimum one twitter post everyday
• Learn a new language
• Cut back on msn/Facebook time
• Run more
• Avoid any and all negativity in my thoughts and actions
• Check my to-do list more frequently
• Get to a 24 hour response time maximum for all emails

I’ll probably be adding more over the next few days. 

I have a personal version of this list with more details for each of these points. It’s important for someone like me to quantify everything. I will be much more effective achieving goals based on numbers rather than based on some abstract points of reference. 

Hope this inspired you to do the same! What are your goals? Lemme know. 

Sometimes when we say we are asking for an opinion we are really only looking for re-affirmation. We get mad when it differs from our own opinion because taking a different point of view into account properly requires effort. Being stubborn is easy.

When I was younger I was very much into magic. When I first started, I would see a magic trick that baffled me and I’d quickly find somebody/somewhere that could teach me how to perform it. Then, just like many others starting in magic, I’d be disappointed by the simplicity of the trick. I’d think to myself: “this is so basic, it would never fool anyone” despite having just been mind blown by said trick moments ago.

Even though it is written in the intro to practically every magic book, it is only after a while that you start to understand that only 10% of magic is in the ‘tricks’. The other 90% is performance. 

The same concepts can be applied to life. Sometimes when we ask questions, we are disappointed with the simplicity of the answers. We dismiss the advice given to us as common sense.

We need to put some time into the performance. The show, if you will. As is with magic, practice makes perfect. 

Rules are limitations. Limitations are walls. Walls make boxes. Think outside the box.

Following up on my recent post about “fear of failure”, I came across a study that really makes perfect sense when you think about it. It concludes that fear of failure makes those with low confidence regarding a task procrastinate said task. On the other hand, fear of failure actually motivates those with high confidence to perform the task and perform it better. 

The other deciding factor is Autonomy. A desire to complete the task. A vested interest, if you will. Someone with high confidence but no interest in the task at hand is more likely to procrastinate.

Thus, I’ve realized that, while I’ve been looking for a way to eliminate my fear of failure, I should be looking for a way to make this very powerful condition work in my favor.

How do we do it?

From Wikipedia:

Fear can be widely classified into two types: external fear and internal fear.

• External fear is caused by something outside of you which you are strongly motivated to avoid, for example: fear of spiders.
• Internal fear is something outside of you to which you link a negative emotion, for example: fear developed out of low self esteem.

Interesting how external fear uses the word “motivate” and internal fear, the words “low self esteem”. If we base ourselves off of our earlier statement, it would appear that your fear of failure needs to be an external one in order for it to be useful.

This does not mean that when you fail, you should blame it on external factors. You need to be able to accept your mistakes and learn from them. It’s more about believing that you will be so good at a task that only an external factor, out of your control, could contribute to your failure. 

I wouldn’t be the first to say that if you believe you can do something and you are persistent, any success achievable. Perhaps these “fear of failure” concepts I’ve been toying with can offer us some insight into the mechanics behind how this strategy works. 

Here is the podcast I heard talking about the “fear of failure” study I mentioned: http://iprocrastinate.libsyn.com/fear_of_failure

Feel free to drop your own thoughts in the comments. 

I have been trying
For the past 6 months plus to
Write you a Haiku