Assignment

This assignment is for those of us that are in a relationship. It's a two person assignment (for you and your partner). So you may want to print it. I'm going to write this directed toward one person, but both should do this and do it individually.

We are going to need 4 blank pages for this (I hope you have a few pages left)

Title the four pages as follows:

Page 1: ADVENTURES
Page 2: SEX
Page 3: FUN
Page 4 you are going to split in Half (draw a horizontal line) and title the first section: TEACH and the second section LEARN

Now on each page you are going to come up with a minimum number of ideas of items in these topics we can do together in the next year or so. Anything goes they can be as small or as large as you’d like sure, crazy things are permitted.

So here are your categories once again, your minimum number of ideas and a few examples to get you going (feel free to use them to get yourself started) Remember no idea is too big, too small or too crazy.

ADVENTURES - 20 ideas – suggestions for small or large adventures you and your partner can go on.
Ex:

• Go to the mall with a camera in hand, go into different stores and dress up in the craziest outfits possible and take snap shots in the dressing room.
• Attempt to get on the roof of the tallest building in your city.
• Take a road trip for the weekend.

SEX – 15 ideas – ideas for everything and anything for you and your partner to do, try, learn, etc regarding your sex lives.
Ex:

• Go to an Adult store and buy something to spice up the bedroom
• Find and Old Polaroid Camera and Film, shoot some retro style risqué photos
• Make/Buy blindfolds

FUN – 15 ideas – Ideas for everyday fun things you can do.
Ex:

• Attend a free cooking class.
• Paint a canvas together.
• Check out a local stand up comedy event.

Learn – 5 things you want to learn from them
Ex: (I want my partner to teach me)

• A language
• Drive a manual transmission
• etc.

Teach – 5 things you want to teach them
Ex: (things I want to teach my partner how to)

• How do solve a Sudoku Puzzle
• Make a particular food
• etc

You have 3 days for you to each complete this. At first you may find it really hard to come up with ideas, but once you get a few out your brain will kick into gear and you'll be filling up each section. Feel free to fill up the page and exceed the set minimum for ideas. They can range from anything big or small. No idea is a bad idea.

Don’t worry about overlapping ideas, you'll probably overlap on your ideas or even use some of the examples. Once you have this completed sit down and compare your ideas and then go out and start completing them. You will learn more about the person you are with and you'll have a lot of fun in the process.

Who Killed Hemingway...

Video may have killed the radio star and then killed itself (have you seen music videos lately?) But I think that Technology Killed the Hemingway

I stumbled upon this anecdote yesterday:

A young photographer showed his portfolio to an older more experienced photographer. He hoping to gain an insight into his work and how to improve his craft. The older photographer assured him his work was technically good and that he should carry on shooting as he had. Unsatisfied with that response he asked "But how do I make my photos more interesting?" "Live a more interesting life." Replied the seasoned pro.

It's become vastly simple to live a very uninteresting life. I myself am guilty on numerous counts of being boring. Thank god I have other counts of being the opposite, so, as for now, they balance out.

As a society we have ease of access to food, water, shelter, we have 24 hour a day entertainment, music, movies, videos all at our finger tips. What have all these treasures made us? Boring and lazy.

We have no great struggles, men no longer have to prove they are men in the fields (yes, in the rest of the world they do, but I'm talking about the city dwelling, blog reading, Starbucks drinking part of our population). Most of us go to work, come home, watch tv, read blogs, look at people's facebook photos, have a drink and go to bed. The next day we get up and do the same thing again and again. This passes on for days, then weeks and finally years. We are boring. So we have nothing interesting to write about, nothing interesting to sing about, no interesting plays to write, no great stories to tell or images to capture. We have monotony.

I continued to think about this little anecdote for the rest of the afternoon as I worked away. I thought about great artists of our time, for example:

Ernest Hemingway:
On his route to the Italian front, he stopped in Paris, which was under constant bombardment from German artillery. Instead of staying in the relative safety of the Hotel Florida, Hemingway tried to get as close to combat as possible.

Soon after arriving on the Italian Front Hemingway witnessed the brutalities of war. On his first day on duty an ammunition factory near Milan blew up. Hemingway had to pick up the human—primarily female—remains.

Hemingway wrote about this experience in his short story "A Natural History of the Dead". This first encounter with death left him shaken.

The soldiers he met later did not lighten the horror. One of them, Eric Dorman-Smith, entertained Hemingway with a line from Part Two of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Act III, Scene II: "By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death...and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next."[4]The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber", one of his famous short stories set in Africa.)

To another soldier, Hemingway once said, "You are troppo vecchio (It. too old) for this war, pop." The 50-year old soldier replied, "I can die as well as any man (Hemingway, for his part, would quote this line in "

From here the man went on to be involved in several more wars, became a friend of Castro, travelled through Africa. Won a Nobel prize, caught on fire and was in two different plane crashes.

How's that for interesting? Similar great artists have life stories that are full of adventure and conflict. It fuels their creative life. Hemingway's story continues from there full of adventure, travel and writing.

Want to be a great artist? Writer? Poet? Painter? Photographer? Designer? heck, even a great person? Then fill your life with interesting people, places, experiences. Get off of your couch. Cancel your cable, cut down on wasting time. Before you do something that could be considered frivolous ask yourself

Will this add to my life? Will I become a more interesting person? What will this experience add to my life?

Who knows, maybe you are a great writer and just need something to write about.

oh and ps. actually a shotgun killed Hemingway.

What some motivation?

Go find it.

You can learn anything...

Neil Strauss from geek to god. Neil decided that he had enough of being a quiet, shy, stay at home individual. Since then he's written numerous best selling books, had a tv show and hangs out with rock stars and celebrities. How? He decided something had to change and then acted on that decision.

What can you learn? Could I teach you Russian? If we sat down for an afternoon would you learn a few words? What if I told you how to jump start a car? Yup, you could learn that too. Hmmm... what else could you learn? Could you learn how to meet new people? shake hands properly? what about learn how to perform well in a job interview? sell a car? ride a bike? make egg rolls? dance?

Here's the magic secret, you can learn how to do anything and then you can learn to do anything better and better and better.

You can learn to be a better friend, better in relationships, better in bed, and overall better in life. Here's the strange part, we learn very little about these things, maybe the friendship stuff we learn in the first 3-8 years of life, we learn about relationships until we are late in our teens, then we have our views intact that will serve us for the rest of our lives.

Most people treat the way they communicate with others, they way they treat their family, their friends, and themselves as if their behaviour was set in stone. I find this both odd and peculiar. When we were young and learning how to interact we learned from people around us, we were impressionable, what we saw shaped us. We can, as adults not only relearn but we can change completely, for the better.

"But I'm happy with who I am, I don't want to change." If you just thought this then please leave this website, you are clearly not of the mindset for this type of learning.

Still reading? Then you must not only be willing to change, but to want to change. It's that desire to change that we can use to fuel you for the rest of your life. Change is something that starts with small things and then gradually grows, building momentum. Change is about taking a belief tearing it down and replacing it with a new belief, let's do that today.

Your first Challenge:

Stop 3 random people today and introduce yourself

"Hi, I'm ________" put your hand out to shake hands, smile and look them in the eyes. Wait and see what happens.

A lot of you are saying "I can't do that" But we have to ask ourselves why does this thought come to mind? Because somewhere in your life you were told that you can't do that, no reason, no rules, no laws, just someone impressed this upon you. Let's void this belief and replace it with a new one.

Complete this challenge and then post up your results in the comments, tell us how it felt, what they did and what your beliefs were and now are. Do you still believe that you can't just introduce yourself to a random stranger?

Less is More

In the book "The Four Hour Work Week" - Tim Ferriss introduces the reader to the 80/20 rule also known at the Pareto principle. It is wildly applicable to many things and through-out the book Tim references it in various aspects.

As part of my transformation I'm trying to apply the 80/20 rule to my life. I know, by this point you are asking WTF is the 80/20 rule... Here are some applications:

Basic principle - 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts

• Business - 80% of your income comes from 20% of your clients.
  
• Work - 80% of your work is completed by 20% of your tasks. If you look at your daily work, most of your results don't come from emailing back and forth, checking websites, reading reports etc. While these pointless pursuits occupy 80% of your day they serve to do nothing else.
  
• You wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time and furthermore you only use about 20% of the things you own.
  

I'm not Tim Ferriss so I can't get you started on the first two as well as the other examples he gives. If you'd like to eliminate 80% of your workload while maintaining your effectiveness, then I suggest picking up his book "The Four Hour Work Week".

What I'm going to touch on today is eliminating 80% of your life. We are owned by what we own. Ever find that your friends that have really nice cars worry about their cars? People that wear really expensive clothes worry about their clothes? I've never seen someone spill red wine on a Walmart shirt and freak out. Why? cause they don't care. It's a $12 shirt, they'll replace it. So let's get started shall we?

1. Purge your office clean. Start with your office. Look around, anything you haven't used in a few months. Get rid off. Throw out anything that isn't of value to anyone, give away the rest. Put it in a box, label "free" on it and stick it somewhere of high visibility. Let the people that don't know any better pick it up, collect it and have it occupy space in their life.
   
   
2. Let's clean out your closet. ANYTHING you haven't worn in the last year. GONE. That suit you had when you were a size 40 waist? Gone. Old shirts? shoes? jeans? shorts? socks? gone. You really only wear 20% of your entire wardrobe. So lets get rid of the rest. Things to save: specific pieces for things like mountain climbing, outdoor adventure, costumes, tuxedos (that fit), suits and the like. You might not have worn these lately but when you are more awesome you'll need them again. I did this several weeks ago and I eliminated about 60% of volume from my closet and I plan on doing this again in a few months. I find myself buying 2 pairs of jeans and cycling them till they are worn. When they are I toss out my oldest pair. At any given time I have 3-4 pairs of jeans and one of those are designated for cleaning/painting/mechanics etc. Let's take this pile of clothes that we no longer want to the Salvation Army. This is win win, you are free and clear of more things you don't want or use and you'll feel good about giving to people that have next to nothing.
   
   
3. The rest of the house. Now here comes the fun, you'll probably need a day for this and some good albums to get you through it. Anything you haven't used in one year. GET RID OF IT. Ok, maybe that's a bit much, you might need some wrenches and screw drivers etc. Keep those and anything that is there for an emergency, for repairs, etc. That jar of pens? gone. Stacks of papers? magazines? Let's be honest you are not going to need to reference that shit. One, because it's dated. Two, because you have the internet you can find this information in less time that it would take to find the magazine/paper .. This goes for school text books, annual reports and any other shit. Gone, gone and gone. Now we are really building momentum. Feels good doesn't it?
   
   
4. CD's, DVD's and the like. Remember your stack of audio cassettes? the ones that you hung on to as CD's phased in? Remember when you threw them out? The "let's get rid of this junk" feelings you had. Well, CD's and DVD's are being phased out. Sure you really like the cases or some stupid reason that you are justifying keeping them. "It's a good movie" unless that's the archival copy you are holding on to for the Weinstein Brothers, then get rid of it. It's time to load up the CD's. First we are ripping them to your hard drive because you don't listen to CD's anymore. They are dying, actually they are dead. So now you have copies of the music you paid to license, nothing illegal here. Now throw them out (give them away, I don't care). DVD's? When was the last time you took a movie out of your DVD collection and watched it? If you really want a movie you can download it, so lets pack these up and take them to Blockbuster where they will give you store credit for them. Now you can buy something with that credit (I think they have mp3 players, and other stuff that are not DVD related items). I know that less is more, but you paid hundreds if not thousands for the DVD collection and I want you to feel like you are getting something for it.
   
   
5. Look around, it feels good. We just cut out about 50% of the shit we don't want. It feels good doesn't it? All of a sudden we have less to worry about. We don't have to worry about something happening to something we don't care about, as well as we have more space. Wait we have more space! More space for more stuff right? Not exactly. Ever notice that you feel really free when you are somewhere that is empty and open?
   Think of a big field or a spacious room with minimal furniture, how does that make you feel, now look at your new zen like space. FREEDOM!
   

I encourage you to continue to do this, to purge your life clean of useless items. You will feel less owned by the items you have and you'll find yourself saving money. What? Really? Saving money by throwing out/giving away stuff? Yes, you'll find yourself in this new Zen like state, well maybe not all of us, but you'll find that you want less cause you realize that you'll probably just end up getting rid of it sooner or later.

Would you rather work here:

Or here:

Step 1

Step one
"BE MORE AWESOME"

Step two
"REPEAT DAILY"




***Warning, I enjoy the term awesome, it's horribly awesome, and you will read that word more than Pauly Shore during a script reading, laugh at it, hate it, I don't care. Awesome? Awesome!***

My day was awesome because I was featured on a local news program and the host told me several times after the taping that the segment was awesome and she really thought there was something great about our interview.

Awesome because I was on contract with a major company and my results from that contract can lead to long term job related success. I did what I needed to do and I plan on presenting my results in the absolute best way possible.

Bragging? Not really, I like to think of it more as conditioning, yes Pavolov, I said conditioning. I didn't tell myself that I was awesome in the segment, the host did. I didn't think how awesome I was doing the job I thought about how awesome the results, if everything was executed properly could be. I'm just reinforcing my beliefs, associating pleasure with the behaviour of being awesome.

I believe that we, as humans (I'm assuming you are a human, if you are not please do not leave spam in my comments section, I don't need granny porn, penis enlargement pills or cheap medication but thanks for stopping by.) are motivated by two things: Pleasure Seeking, Pain Avoidance. We do something because we want to seek the pleasure of doing it (sex, making money, winning the Super Bowl) or we do something to avoid pain (wearing warm clothes in the winter, pay bills, get out of the way of on coming traffic).

If you associate pleasure with working out, feeling good and looking good then you will be more prone to workout than if you associate pain with not working out. Don't believe me? Think of the times you mow down on some oh so tasty unhealthy fast food, mmmmm.... soooo good, pure pleasure. Then what happens? You feel like ass, your guts hurt and bring on the pain. "I'm never doing this again, no more baconators for me!" A few weeks later the Baconator shows up on your lunch tray, mmmmm..... bacony goodness. Final score? Pleasure 2, Pain 0.
So my first goal is to establish pleasure with everything. Eliminate pain? nope not at all, I don't think that this is even possible. I simply readjust my view. How can I turn PAIN into PLEASURE? It's all about perspective. So if I can condition myself to look at the pleasure of not eating a cheeseburger - feeling better, feeling I made a smart choice, I'll look better, I'll be healthier. All of a sudden that decision is easier. Final score? Pleasure 2, Pain 0 but this time pleasure comes in the form of a chicken breast and some veggies.

It seems that Pleasure seeking makes us feel great, Pain avoidance sucks our energy, it requires effort and the reward is not as good.

Would you rather comment on this blog post if you got a $5 reward or because if you don't I will punch you?

More Awesome.

In January of 2009 I looked back at the past year and realized that I could have had more "awesome" in it. What is "more awesome"? Well it's a term that we came up with a few years ago relating to enhancing our lives. All aspects. Money, Grooming, Fitness, Work, Relationships and the like.